Edenton, NC - Celebrating our 4 years of marriage!

Nick & I celebrated four years of marriage last week and we had planned a night away in Edenton, NC. It only about 2ish hours from Raleigh and fairly historic, so we felt it would be a good choice. It is definitely a quaint little town full of history, but not much to see after about 2 days. I would recommend a visit to Edenton to anyone- just not for more than a weekend. Otherwise, you would run out of things to do!

We stayed at a cute bed & breakfast near the waterfront called The Pack House Inn. It was originally built as a tobacco packing house back in 1915. They even have a neat Model T car out front that still has the original interior.

The Inn had a small cottage off to the side that had one guest room and is where they served breakfast each morning. It happened to be the cottage we stayed in, so other than breakfast hours, we had the place to ourselves! The story behind it is that it was the home of Tillie Bond who also owned The Cupola House at one point. The front porch swing is original to the house! The morning breakfast by the way was very impressive - sausage, eggs, ham, fried potatoes, fruit, blueberry pancakes, and spice cake!

Saturday was full of site seeing and getting our taste of the town! We first stopped at The Barker House, circa 1782. The original owner, Penelope Barker was said to be the main leader in the Edenton Tea Party. It is now owned by the Edenton Historical Commission.

Nearby was the Roanoke River Lighthouse. We couldn't go in it since it was currently being restored. It dates back to 1886. It is believed to be the last example in the US of a rectangular frame building built for a screw pile base.

Nick's favorite site was The Cupola House, mainly because of the beautiful gardens. The Cupola House was built in 1758 and had two or three heirs before Tillie Bond occupied it in 1918. An association in Edenton brought the house from Tillie to preserve it. It has been the town library and museum at one point in time. The Jacobean design of the house is one of the two most important examples of this architectural wooden house style south of New England.

The gardens were very pretty- I loved all the rosemary b/c it made it smell wonderful. Nick liked seeing all the different plants & trees. I was most intrigued by the fact that the gardens were designed by Donald Parker- a landscape architect with Colonial Williamsburg.

We stopped by the 1767 Chowan County Courthouse because it is supposedly the most intact colonial courthouse in the US, but we couldn't go inside. Nick did manage to get into some trouble while site seeing at the courthouse, so I decided to lock him up for punishment. (See below).

Same with The Iredell House- not open to the public :( It looked very neat inside from the pictures, so wish we could have gone in. It was the home of James Iredell in the early 1800s. He was NC Attorney General & Superior Judge during the American Revolution and an Associate Justice on the first US Supreme Court.

I really liked getting to see St. Paul's Episcopal Church. It is the second oldest surviving church in North Carolina from 1736. The inside looked a lot like the historic churches you see in Boston. A wedding had just taken place earlier that day b/c there were flower petals and bird seed on the ground.

The waterfront was very pretty too, as I was suprised how calm the water was. Very few boats out and about.

We enjoyed our meals too- lunch at the Soda Shoppe and dinner at Waterman's, but was disappointed that everything is closed on Sunday. We had wanted to stay for lunch, but our only option would have been Dairy Queen! So we left and stopped in Rocky Mount for lunch instead.
All in all it was a great way to celebrate 4yrs!