Tourists in New Bern

Yesterday, we took advantage of the quickly-clearing weather to take a day trip to New Bern, a place that we visited a lot when I was a kid because my grandparents lived there. We still have relatives in town, and we met with my aunt and uncle at Smithfield’s and caught up over heaps of Eastern Carolina barbecue, hush puppies, baked beans and fries.

Perched at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent rivers, New Bern was settled by Swiss and Germans in 1710. Today, it’s a historic area with a pretty downtown area marked by churches, tasteful tourist shops, blossoming trees and southern mansions. We parked the car near the square and walked around, past stores selling teddy bears, home furnishings, seashells and pilates lessons. Old holiday decorations lingered in the windows, including an elaborate mural featuring excerpts of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Our first destination was the waterfront of the Neuse River, which looks more like a bay from its still waters and seashells we could see through the clear water. We wandered along a walking path next to a yatch harbor, then emerged at Union Point Park and strolled by the water, solid blue under the sky.

As Mary and Ryan watched the dozens of birds bobbing on the water and fluttering through the air— herring gulls, mallards, coots, and hoards of pigeons— Mary said, “I wish we had some bread.” A minute later she glanced over the boardwalk and saw a loaf of stale bread floating by the shore. We all said she should have wished for a million bucks instead. C’est la vie. At any rate, the magical bread provided a lot of entertainment for all of us. 

No trip to New Bern would be complete without a visit to the birthplace of Pepsi-Cola. I don’t usually drink soda, so I just sat with the others in the café area and watched a documentary of Pepsi’s history, beginning in 1898 with the tagline “Pepsi-Cola: Delicious. Healthful.” We chatted with the help for a while, and they recommended us to the perfect place for dessert: the Cow Café. The ice cream was all homemade, with bovine-themed flavors such as “Cowpachinno” and “Almoond Joy.” I bought a double-decker cone of chocolate “Gooey Cowphooey” and “Peanut Udder Cup.” Anyone who’s ever worked on a dairy farm would gag at the thought, but I, a city kid who has never milked a cow, ate the ice cream with abandon. The guy at the counter gave us heaping servings, too. We tipped him well.

A search for the post office led us to another part of the waterfront, where a wetlands restoration project was in effect. We strolled across the boardwalk and watched a flock of coots dabbling around nearby as the sky took on pre-sunset colors. It was a relaxing afternoon of tourism, and I went to bed content with where I was and how the day had gone. 

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