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I've been asking the same question for the longest time. I'm a carolina native who moved out of Raleigh/Cary a few years ago. Raleigh-Durham continues to rank top in terms of singles. But whenever I'm there, it seems sooo slow and tough to find singles. Downtown Raleigh is only good on the weekend. Other than that the place seems dead.
Man, a year ago I visited NC for a week to possibly move there.
I narrowed down the choices to Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham to check out based on what I was looking for. I like sports, suburban areas within distance to a larger city, plenty of jobs, lower home prices, clean atmosphere.
We first hit Charlotte and really liked the area. The downtown was super easy to drive in compared to most cities I've been in, there were some nice areas not too far away from Charlotte, we we around Ballantyne and Lake Wylie. The city had an ok nightlife but the atmosphere was really nice. We had a great time and we liked all the building that was going on downtown. I like how it seemed almost trendy at times, it had a bit of an edge.
Next we went to Raleigh/Durham for a 4 day stay. From the pictures Raleigh looked like a big city but boy we went on a Friday to start and it was DEAD. The downtown seemed like it was all financial or something because there was not one person out and even the street with the college bars was pretty weak. I wasn't too impressed with the city as a whole. We decided to go to Durham and visited the Duke Gardens but Durham just seemed rather run down to us. The whole triangle as a whole just seemed like it was way too sprawling and everything was far apart, definitely not the place to go if you are looking for a nightlife (other than druken college kids from Duke and Chapel Hill). The Duke Gardens were nice though.
The people were also really nice. Random people were coming up and talking to me at Borders Book Store in Cary when we were there which never happens here in the NE. Cary didn't impress me either, we drove all over the town after hearing it was top rated and it just seemed like a suburban town with nothing to do.
I understand that some people like sprawling properties in a suburban wonderland away from the hustle and bustle and that is fine but if you are looking for singles, a nightlife, the triangle just doesn't seem like the place to me.
^We're working on it.
The urban nightlife/entertainment districts of the downtowns of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill/Carrboro are unfortunately scattered into little mini-districts here and there. (Raleigh even runs a little "trolly" on nights and weekends to link them.) My guess is that you probably missed them...they're usually not in the same blocks as the business & government centers are. If you don't know them well, you'll miss alot.
Anyone else plan on visiting these cities, you should look up some info so you don't miss those areas and the things they offer: www.downtownraleigh.org (or downtownraleigh.com --they're both useful) www.downtowndurham.com www.downtownchapelhill.com
(Oh, and your assessment of Cary is pretty dead-on...it is a suburb.)
I did quite a bit of research before going but being from outside the state you are correct, I probably did miss a lot of the good local spots. I was at downtownraleigh.com before the trip but for some reason the spots we wanted to go to were dead, must have just been a weird fluke. There were a bunch of good restaurants recommended that we wanted to try but didn't have time for, as well as a famous burger and BBQ place.
It's still a nice area, what a shocker how far away things are in NC after coming from CT. When someone told us it'd be around 3 hours to the beach from Raleigh I was like another 3 hours? We just drove 2.5 from Charlotte, haha. I'm used to my tiny Connecticut where we can traverse the state in a couple hours.
Cary was weird, all the streets seemed to be named after nuts. We got lost one time looking for a condo development we were going to tour and we just followed the nuts back to safety
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