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Day 6: The Best Day Ever
We woke up early this morning to make our way to Southport, NC. We added Southport and Wilmington on our itinerary a little later in the planning process, and I am so glad we did! Southport is where they filmed the movie Safe Haven, which I love. In the movie, Southport seemed like the perfect little coastal town, and I really wanted to go see it. Let me tell you, it was everything I had hoped it would be and more. It was quaint, quiet, picture perfect, and right on the water. Actually we both fell in love with it so quickly. If we weren't so set on going to grad school we seriously would move there in a heartbeat. The people were friendly, the food was great, and the location is prime. We drove around and looked at houses though, and they are expensive. That doesn't mean we haven't kept looking though. I found the cutest old house with the best porch that was actually in our price range, so now I'm just trying to talk Brandon into it.

We walked around and saw all the sights from Safe Haven, ate at a restaurant that plays a key role in one of our favorite tv shows, and also saw the house from that same show. We only spent a few hours there, because I'm pretty sure if we would have stayed any longer we never would have left. We then had a half hour drive to Wilmington.

When we got there, we checked into our hotel and grabbed some brochures to find stuff to do. We decided to do a carriage tour and tour a mansion there, so we grabbed our stuff and rushed to get to the carriage tour. Well, we got lost. We ended up at their headquarters, not where the carriage actually leaves from. On our way to the right spot, we came across the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. We decided to stop and check out the campus, and we actually really really liked it. They don't have my program, but they have a part-time MBA program, so we grabbed some info, toured the campus for a bit, then went to do our carriage tour. The tour was an hour long and took us all around historic Wilmington. Wilmington is a beautiful area. Brandon and I decided that we could actually see ourselves living there as well. Basically I think any coastal town in North Carolina would suit us well. We didn't have time to tour the mansion after the carriage tour, so we went to Wrightsville Beach, got some pizza, and hung out on the beach for a while. When we were getting ready to leave, I said that I just wished we could see more wildlife than we had seen while parasailing. We then stood there for like thirty more seconds, not wanting to leave, and right before we turned around we saw dolphins! It was the greatest thing ever!

We left Wrightsville Beach to go to Carolina Beach, where they were supposed to have fireworks and live music. They had carnival rides and tons of tourists, but we couldn't find the live music anywhere. We were reading a banner about their summer events and some guy told us the band and the fireworks were cancelled because it had rained at 2:00 that afternoon. It was pretty lame. So we left and went back to the hotel since we were leaving early the next morning. I had a really hard time parting with that area of North Carolina. I still miss it every day, and I would move there in a heartbeat.