Wrightsville Beach / Wilmington Week 1
First Week in Wilmington | Wrightsville Beach | November 2022
Over 6 years ago, we lived in Charleston, South Carolina, and for our third wedding anniversary we decided to take a trip to Wilmington, NC. Since it was a special occasion, and in the middle of a hot and humid summer when camping would just be too uncomfortable, we “splurged” on a nice hotel – a Holiday Inn with a nice military discount in nearby Leland. (I referred to it as a “fancy hotel” many times in that blog post!) We went out for one nice dinner and toured the battleship, but other than that made it a budget friendly trip with lots of free activities.
Fast forward to now — freshly out of the military, Curtis’ new employer was holding training in Wilmington, NC, so we traveled down together, excited to start this new chapter. Going into it, we expected to have some expenses come out of pocket since Curtis is the only one working for them, and Charlotte and I are just along for the ride. To offset costs, we traveled by car rather than by plane, we camped on the way down, and just ate snacks throughout the day and canned soup for dinners. Having lots of experience with living in hotels while in the Navy, we planned in advance to bring things like our electric griddle and cooking utensils so that we could grocery shop and make cheap meals at the hotel.
We sort of thought of this trip as a test to see how the company reimburses workers for travel and how they take care of their employees. Curtis is an honest man and hard worker and would absolutely still honor his new commitment, but how this trip went could determine our outlook on the situation and how long it could last. As it turns out, things were even better than we had imagined!
They put us in a cool and trendy hotel downtown, right along the riverwalk. This was perfect for taking walks together in the mornings and evenings, and for me walking Charlotte throughout the days. We were on the top floor of the building with floor to ceiling windows giving us great views of the city. It makes the idea that I called our Holiday Inn “fancy” on numerous occasions laughable (though one reason I cited for it being fancy was that it had chocolate milk at the continental breakfast, and this one didn’t even have a continental breakfast, so you tell me which is fancier!) Along with that, the company doesn’t do per diems like the military would, they simply reimburse for food and other necessary expenses, and their vague limit is very reasonable.
All that to say, it really felt like we’d come a long way since our last visit to Wilmington. It’s almost uncomfortable for us in our frugal mindset to adjust to these changes, but we very much enjoyed the hotel and trying lots of different restaurants in town. Charlotte, on the other hand, seemed to adjust right away and would stroll into the big fancy hotel like she owned the place (We’d pitch The Suite Life of Charlotte to Disney, but they couldn’t afford it).
During the weeks here, Curtis of course had to attend training (you don’t get to stay in fancy hotels for nothing) and I was in the thick of getting my website moved to a new server, so it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I mean that literally, too — at the end of our first week, a tropical storm was moving across the Southeast. Thankfully all we got was rain! Besides that, the weather was just as warm and pleasant as you’d hope for a vacation in the South in November.
On our first night, we went for a walk to find dinner, and since we’re not the best at decisions we decided to walk until we found something with outdoor seating or to go since we had Charlotte with us. We ended up at Island Fresh Mex Grill, which turned out to not be our favorite for the week, but was perfectly fine considering we had been eating canned soup the last 2 nights. It also left enough for breakfast the next morning.
The next day, Curtis got a ride to work, and I surprised us both by driving across town to Aldi to stock up on breakfast and lunch foods and healthy snacks. That evening we went to a social where I got to meet his boss and some of his colleagues, then we went out for sushi at Nikki’s Fresh Gourmet & Sushi.
We got into a nice routine that week of going for walks together before and after work, walking downtown to dinner, for snacks, or just for fun. We ate most meals at the hotel that week because we still weren’t comfortable with going out all the time (but have now come to see it as being a perk of the job). Our favorite meal that week came from a place called Copper Penny, which serves amazing Philly sandwiches.
Veterans Day was that weekend, and Curtis had a three day weekend. We went out for brunch at the Basics where we both had amazing breakfast sandwiches, then we walked around downtown and through the neighborhoods admiring the architecture, trees, and flowers. We were supposed to get rain from the tropical storm, but when the skies seemed clear enough that afternoon we ventured out to Wrightsville Beach.
As it turns out, the off season is a great time to visit Wilmington, for more than just to avoid the summer heat. Parking at Wrightsville Beach is free and the beach is dog-friendly between October and March. Curtis did some metal detecting while I walked Charlotte. It was windy and the waves were loud, but we had over an hour of beach time before it started raining. Once the rain began, we hurried back to our car, but I stopped to take one last look and spotted a rainbow over the pier.
We realized after that, thanks to this outing, we have kept up our trend of seeing an ocean at least once every year since 2012. We still say we aren’t beach people, but we’ll see how long this trend lasts now that we aren’t with the Navy. (2012 – Outer Banks; 2013 – San Diego; 2014 – Santa Barbara; 2015 – Newport RI & Charleston, SC; 2016 – SC, GA, FL, NC, ME, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; 2017 – CT, RI, WA, OR, & HI; 2018 – HI; 2019 – HI, AK, CA; 2020 – HI; 2021 – WA)
