One of my favorite “weird and wonderful” nearby locations is the city of Durham. We live in the Triangle of North Carolina, which is formed by the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, plus a lot of other surrounding cities and suburbs. Though we live in Cary and used to live in Raleigh, Durham remains our favorite city to eat, play, and spend time in.

While talking about all the things I love about Durham would require a much longer post, its funky personality and commitment to keeping the city weird and thus, interesting, make Durham such a fun place to be.

For one, colorful, random art like this can be found all over downtown.

Durham also maintains many of its historical landmarks, most of which offer a cool, retro vibe to the city skyline. The American Tobacco Campus in downtown Durham was formerly the site of several tobacco companies, like Lucky Strike. And one of the brick smokestacks still remains with the Lucky Strike logo on it. It can also be seen from the nearby baseball field, attaching a different meaning of “strike” to it. American Tobacco Campus now holds startups, tech companies, NPR recording studios, and other modern businesses, and features lots of restaraunts, art, and green space. It’s a great example of keeping things a little weird, but also pretty wonderful.

Wanderlust Wednesday is a weekly travel post, featuring places I’ve been and places I want to go that fuel my wanderlust. Love travel? View all my travel posts!