The Friendly City by the Sea

It never ceases to surprise me how suddenly weather can change overnight out here.  After the high wind and "considerable cloudiness" of yesterday, we awoke to bright sunshine in a cloudless sky.  The winds were (as they say) "light and variable."  It was a rest day before our long run tomorrow, so we decided to drive along the coast past Emerald Isle to Swansboro, a pretty, pedestrian-friendly little Town on the White Oak River.

We had a delicious lunch at the Saltwater Grill, a place we discovered last year; good seafood cures many ills, as the sign proclaims upon entering, and the cure was well-received by these two hungry runners.

We sat outside on an enclosed deck and enjoyed the warm sunshine, watching small fishing boats out on the river; it was the most peaceful setting for lunch we could have chosen.

After lunch, Martha went in some of the quaint little shops in the business area down by the river, while I took a self-guided walking tour up the hill.  Swansboro was founded in 1783, exactly one hundred years before Highlands was, and it has a history going back even farther.  But most of its well-preserved older homes up above Front Street were built just after the turn of the 20th century; many of them have Historical Society plaques, and some of them go back as far as 1901.  There are a lot of mermaid and ships-wheel motifs incorporated into the architecture.  This rambling beauty is typical.

The Town bills itself as "The Friendly City by the Sea," and the folks we passed on the street and in the shops did indeed seem friendly enough; even the cemetery on top of the hill was friendly.

It was another beautiful day, and by the time we returned I felt as if I had stretched my legs just enough before tomorrow's long run.  Time to settle down with that Ian Rankin book, which will have to improve or it will be the first and the last in the Rebus series for me.  But a bookshelf labeled "Literature" in a thrift store we stopped in had an entire shelf of old favorites, and I walked out with Pride and Prejudice and, because my copy at home is falling apart from being so frequently read, Hamlet, just to be sure I have something to fall back on.  A woman had sidled up to me as I was browsing through the "Literature" and, pointing to a short stack of three or four books that had been removed and was piled in front of the others, asked, "Are you the one who's been doing that?  Pulling them out like that?"

"Not me," I protested.  But she lingered in the area, and I thought she was still eyeing me suspiciously as I left in the good company of Austen and Shakespeare.

LORD POLONIUS

What do you read my lord?

HAMLET

Words, words, words.