Hi folks. I'm a newbie to this site, but a fairly frequent visitor to eomahaforums.com.
I'm an Omaha native and current resident. My girlfriend and I are looking to visit for the Nebraska-Wake Forest game this fall - weekend of 9/8/07 to be exact. Probably looking for a 3-4 night stay, and we're looking for some advice within the following criteria:
1) The game is the reason we're coming, but only going to be about 4-5 hours of one Saturday. We won't be the red-wearing yahoos you see the rest of the weekend.
2) We're urban/city rats. I don't care about the burbs, chain restaurants, and malls because we have those here. We lived in South Baltimore for several years (until July '05), so we want everything to be walkable, historic, and/or unique to Winston Salem. You also won't scare us easily.
3) By that time, we'll be 31 and 38. We're all for entertaining, but we're not interested in clubs, dance music, or meat markets. Fine dining, museums, art districts, and eclectic shopping are more of our cup o' tea, but we're down with a good burger 'n' ale (or whatever the local "must have" is). Please no Busch Light draws for $.99 specials. Think scotch, wine, and brew pubs.
4) Non-smoking venues. I can't stress this enough. (And yes, I realize we're going to North Carolina.) I'm an ex-smoker and can't stand to be around it anymore. Restaurants or bars that "aren't that bad" or have a "small smoking area" are non-issues. I mean non-freakin'-smoking. Period.
(And please please PLEASE I'm not interested in turning this thread into a smoking ban debate. Pretty please?)
5) We're down with dinner and drinks for two hitting the $250-$300+ neighborhood, assuming the food and venue warrant it. See #2 through #4. Tel us about Winston Salem's best. And no, we're not interested in Ruth's Chris or Flemmings or any of the other high-end chains (but we ARE looking for that caliber dining).
6) Depending on feedback and time frame, we might be looking at a night or two in Winston-Salem, and a night or two in Raleigh-Durham, or vice versa. It's wide open at this point. Focus on Winston Salem, but if the feeling is right, we might just schlep the rental up/down the highway.
So, there you have it. We're totally open to suggestions within those parameters. Live music, live theater, street performers, dining, art, university craziness, whatever. I'll bookmark the thread to make sure I can steer responses. We've had great success with info from folks from Denver and KC, so you've got a lot to prove.
See you in September
Go Big Red
-Big E