30 Things to Do in Wilmington, NC — a Local Host's List

Every guest who checks into Third & Oak gets some version of this list, trimmed to the weather and whoever's asking. We live two blocks off the Cape Fear River, so consider this the local's cut. No filler, organized the way people actually plan a day.

On the river and around downtown

• 1. Walk the Cape Fear Riverwalk. Almost two miles of boardwalk along the river. Go at golden hour. We wrote a whole guide to it, including where to stop and where to park.
• 2. Tour the Battleship NORTH CAROLINA. The WWII battleship moored across the river anchors the entire skyline. You can climb through her decks and engine rooms, and the view back toward downtown is worth the ticket by itself.
• 3. Take a river cruise. Sightseeing and sunset cruises run from the downtown docks in season. An easy way to see the port city from the water.
• 4. Browse the Cotton Exchange. Shops and eateries inside restored 19th-century warehouses at the north end of Front Street.
• 5. Ride a horse-drawn carriage. Touristy? Sure. Nobody has ever come back from the narrated carriage tour mad about it, especially at dusk.
• 6. Take a ghost walk. Wilmington is one of the South's oldest port cities and leans into it after dark. October books out.
• 7. Catch a show at Riverfront Park. The Live Oak Bank Pavilion brings national tours through all summer. Check the calendar before you pick your dates; show nights change the whole downtown rhythm.

History and architecture

• 8. Bellamy Mansion Museum. The grand antebellum mansion on Market Street. The tours cover the architecture and, importantly, the enslaved craftsmen who built it.
• 9. Burgwin-Wright House & Gardens. A 1770s colonial townhouse with terraced gardens, a few blocks from our front door.
• 10. Latimer House. An Italianate house museum from the same era as our own building. If you like Third & Oak's bones, this is the tour for you.
• 11. Wander the Historic District itself. Two hundred-plus blocks of 18th- and 19th-century houses, free, no ticket. Start on South 3rd and drift toward the river. Our house is on the route, so we're partial. Bring coffee from one of these places.
• 12. See a show at Thalian Hall. Hosting performances since 1858, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the country. Two blocks from the suites.
• 13. Wilmington Railroad Museum. Small and earnest, and great with kids. The railroad once made Wilmington the biggest city in North Carolina; this is that story.
• 14. Cape Fear Museum. Regional history and science on Market Street. A solid rainy-day hour or two.

Arts, film, and the newer districts

• 15. Cameron Art Museum. Wilmington's contemporary art anchor. The grounds deserve a slow lap too.
• 16. Gallery-hop the Brooklyn Arts District. North 4th Street: studios, galleries, and the Brooklyn Arts Center, a restored 1888 church turned event venue.
• 17. Explore the Cargo District. Shops and small bars built out of shipping containers south of downtown. Scrappy in the best way.
• 18. Chase film locations. Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, Iron Man 3, and a few dozen others shot here. They call it Hollywood East and only half-jokingly. We mapped the spots in our film locations guide.

Beaches and the outdoors

• 19. Wrightsville Beach in the morning. Fifteen minutes from downtown, clear water, long clean strand. Go early, beat the bridge traffic, be back downtown for lunch.
• 20. Carolina Beach boardwalk. Old-school beach town: arcades, summer rides, and the seasonal line at Britt's for donuts. The line is part of it.
• 21. Kure Beach & Fort Fisher. Quietest of the three island beaches, plus the Civil War earthworks at Fort Fisher and the NC Aquarium down the road.
• 22. Airlie Gardens. Historic public gardens on the way to Wrightsville. Azaleas in spring; live oaks always.
• 23. Greenfield Lake. A cypress-draped lake loop minutes from downtown, with paddleboats and an amphitheater that books real touring acts.
• 24. Boat out to Masonboro Island. Undeveloped barrier island, reachable only by water. Charter or water taxi from Wrightsville, pack in and pack out.
• 25. Learn to surf. Wrightsville is one of the East Coast's classic surf towns. Everyone is terrible at their first lesson. That's the fun part.

Eat and drink your way through it

• 26. Do a proper downtown dinner. Olivero, PinPoint, Seabird. The bench is deep. Our full where-to-eat list is the one we text guests.
• 27. Crawl the breweries. Start at Front Street Brewery downtown and branch out from there. The local beer scene has quietly gotten serious.
• 28. Coffee crawl the Historic District. The Maroon Monkey down Nun Street from us, espresso flights at Concorde, brunch at Drift. All walkable from the suites.

Plan around the calendar

• 29. North Carolina Azalea Festival (April). Wilmington's signature week. Garden tours, concerts, parades, the whole town in bloom and booked. Reserve lodging months out.
• 30. Riverfest (October), then the holidays. Riverfest takes over the waterfront each fall. Come late November the Historic District does Christmas lights the way only a Victorian neighborhood can, and the beach towns run their holiday flotilla.