And YES! We had fish for supper - about every day, freshly caught.

And a stop-over at Oriental - the �Key West� of North Carolina. Well, it�s pushing it a bit. Nevertheless, the beer on the Veranda was great, the �Carribean� music gave it a certain exotic charm, and it smelled of harbour and water.

Dream Garden ....

Marleyne found her dream-garden here. On one side of the house a nice (and how rich the air smelt!) spice garden; on the other side, facing the sound, a flower garden. Marleyne had tears in her eyes because of all the beauty. I am sure she was wondering how to make our own garden to look something like this!

Then we moved over to Edenton, on the Albemarle Sound. A place we had heard about often, but again, when traveling south by boat, bypassing it, because it is off the ICW (by about 15 miles). But next time, we just want make the detour .... A place full of history.

Bath, Pamlico Sound

Bath on the Pamlico Sound

Eastern, 2006 ... well, the forecast for Kingston, Ontario wasn’t great, actually, pretty bad. BUT! The forecast for North Carolina was fantastic, with summer-like temperatures. Summer as in Kingston summer.
It did not take us long to load the car (and the tent, just in case), and to drive off to North Carolina.

We wanted to see flowers, we wanted to have warm sun, good food (fish!) ... and a change of scenery.

And we like North Carolina, we passed here through many times - by boat, but never took our time to explore places away from the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW); although the guidebooks were full of niece descriptions of old towns and romantic places.

Now, we had the time - and the car with us.

Indeed, the weather was great, enabling us to pitch our tent close to New Bern/Beaufort, and run day-trips from there. Up the Pamlico Sound, up the Albemarle Sound, making use of the free ferries carrying us over.
Bath was a romantic little town, sleepy, nicely located on the water. We wished we could have had a coffee here, to sit down and do nothing than just looking - no luck here. The only café was still closed for the season, indeed, we seem to be the only tourists here! And that around Easter!

It is 2006 ... a year we want to fill with travels (since there must be more to life than just work - right?). In this blog we want to share our places with our friends, places we had visitited during this year.

Enjoy the images and the stories!

Heiner and Marleyne