Things To Do in Chapel Hill

Your best introduction to the university is a free 1-hour campus tour that leaves from the Morehead Planetarium (the west entrance) on East Franklin Street. For details, contact the UNC Visitors Center located within the Morehead Planetarium (tel. 919/962-1630). Hours are 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.

With the tour or on your own, look for the Old Well, once the only source of drinking water for Chapel Hill. It stands in the center of the campus on Cameron Avenue, in a small, templelike enclosure with a dome supported by classic columns. Just east of it is Old East, begun in 1793 and the country's oldest state-university building. Across the way stands the "newcomer," Old West, built in 1824. South Main Building was begun nearby in 1798 and wasn't finished until 1814; in the interim, students lived inside the empty shell in rude huts. At the Coker Arboretum, at Cameron Avenue and Raleigh Street, 5 acres are planted with a wide variety of plants. As you walk around the campus, you'll hear popular tunes coming from the 167-foot Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower, an Italian Renaissance-style campanile.

Morehead Planetarium, on East Franklin Street (tel. 919/549-6863; www.moreheadplanetarium.org), was the first planetarium owned by a university, and it was once used as a NASA training center. The star of the permanent scientific exhibits here is a large orrery, showing the simultaneous action of planets revolving around the sun, moons revolving around planets, and planets rotating on their axes. There's also a stargazing theater with a 68-foot dome. Admission to the planetarium is free; admission to the show is $6 for adults and $5 for seniors, students, and children. Hours are Monday to Saturday 10am to 5pm (plus Fri-Sat 6:30-9pm and Sun 1-5pm).

UNC has one of the largest athletic programs in the South. The Tarheels field 26 varsity teams and maintain a 24-hour Carolina hot line number, providing recorded information about all upcoming sporting events on campus. Information is also available from the Smith Center Ticket Office (tel. 800/722-4335 or 919/962-2296; Mon-Fri 8am-5pm). Carolina basketball is followed passionately all over the state ("If God's not a Tarheel, why did he make the sky Carolina blue?"). Former coach and local icon Dean Smith is practically revered on campus; the Smith Center, named in his honor, is referred to as the Dean Dome. Carolina has a long history of recruiting top players; its famous alums include Michael Jordan and James Worthy.

Off campus, one of the most appealing botanical gardens in the Southeast comprises nearly 600 acres of mostly donated land and a vast array of plants that are divided into at least six distinctive categories and habitats. Accessible via laboriously laid-out paths and walking trails, the North Carolina Botanical Garden ★★, Totten Center (tel. 919/962-0522; www.ncbg.unc.edu), includes about 2,500 of the 4,700 plant species that are known to be native or naturalized in North and South Carolina, as well as herbs and horticultural plants from around the world. Thanks partly to its supervision by UNC, there's no charge for admission or for maps of the garden's walking trails. Allow at least 45 minutes for the simplest overview of this amazingly complex compound of gardens and natural habitats. It's open Monday to Friday year-round 8am to 5pm; Saturday hours are 9am to 6pm; Sunday hours are 1 to 6pm.

Growing Your Own Endangered Plants

The North Carolina Botanical Garden (tel. 919/962-0522; www.ncbg.unc.edu), which is maintained by the Horticultural Department of the University of North Carolina, is described above. But what many visitors don't realize is that the staff that maintains the gardens also devotes enormous time and effort to its "conservation through propagation program," wherein rare (and sometimes imperiled) Carolina plants are propagated through seeds and cuttings, and then sold at rock-bottom prices to visitors in the hopes that they'll cultivate them in their own private gardens. Unusual and often rare plants, most of them thriving and healthy, are sold on the "honor system," whereby cash is to be deposited into a waterproof box near the display tables without supervision from sales staff. Credit cards (MasterCard and Visa) are accepted for larger purchases as well, and a staff member or volunteer is usually on hand to explain the origin of the plants and their preferred growing conditions. Potted plants, depending on their rarity and how hard they were to propagate, cost from $3.50 to $15 each and tend to include species that are more rare and unusual than what you'd find, say, in a Home Depot garden center. If you love plants and want a living souvenir of your visit to North Carolina, a selection of plants culled from these gardens would be a brilliant idea. The center is open year-round Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm, Saturday 9am to 6pm, and Sunday 1 to 6pm.

Many college towns in the South are noted for their quirky character and artistic penchant, however folksy. Chapel Hill is not without its eclectic beat, and you'll discover shops and boutiques that you would expect to find only in big cities.

A Southern Season, in the Eastgate Shopping Center, 1800 E. Franklin St. (tel. 919/929-7133; www.southernseason.com), is one of the largest, most up-to-date, sprawling, and comprehensive large-scale shopping emporiums in North Carolina. It offers a fabulous array of delicatessen-style gourmet foods to go, wines and liqueurs, porcelain and crystal, and gift items, many with a distinctive Southern flair. Particularly appealing are gift baskets that, depending on what you specify, might contain kudzu jelly, Moravian spice cookies, chocolate-covered Carolina pecans, Carolina buttercrunch toffee, Blue Ridge bonbons, all manner of North Carolina honey-cured hams, plus about a thousand different gourmet items imported from Europe. You can even order vacuum-packed North Carolina barbecue here, available in either the western (with a touch of tomato sauce) or eastern North Carolina (with salt, pepper, and vinegar) style. The center is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 9pm, Sunday noon to 6pm.

The Weathervane, a restaurant associated with A Southern Season shopping emporium, takes the best of its affiliate's produce and turns it into a sophisticated array of salads and sandwiches priced from $5 to $12 and main courses priced from $12 to $22. Set in a woodsy family-friendly format immediately adjacent to the store, it's open Monday to Thursday from 7am to 9pm, Friday to Saturday from 7am to 10pm, and Sunday 10:30am to 6pm. American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, and Visa are accepted.

Well-read Chapel Hill has a large book-buying public, and Franklin Street is the site of most bookstores. The Bookshop, Inc., 400 W. Franklin St. (tel. 919/942-5178; www.bookshopinc.com; Mon-Fri 11am-9pm, Sat 11am-6pm, and Sun 1-5pm), has been a civic monument in Chapel Hill since 1981. This bookshop sells only used books and (in the words of its owner, Bill Loeser) "everything except textbooks and romance novels." It doesn't seem very large, but its cramped, crowded, and somewhat dingy premises contain some 150,000 books, ranging in price from 50¢ to a rare 1770 edition of Catesby's History of the Carolinas, selling here for around $40,000.

Immediately across the street, and selling a radically different style and type of book, is Chapel Hill's most visible counterculture bookstore. The Internationalist Book & Magazine Cooperative, 405 W. Franklin St. (tel. 919/942-1740; www.internationalistbooks.org; Mon-Sat 11am-8pm and Sun noon-6pm), is funky, artsy, and the darling of Chapel Hill residents with a slightly leftist bent; it focuses on feminist, gay, lesbian, graphic arts, and poetry tomes.

Some 3 miles east of the center of Chapel Hill stands Meadowmont Village, adjacent to Route 54 (eastbound). This upscale multipurpose shopping, residential, office, and dining complex is evocative of the way visitors and locals dine and shop in the New South.

A unique food market is the Weaver Street Market, 101 E. Weaver St. (tel. 919/929-0010; www.weaverstreetmarket.coop), 1 mile west of Chapel Hill. It is a rambling but modern warehouselike structure near the center of Carrboro that's piled almost to the rafters with all-organic foodstuffs. You can buy things that are fresh, Carolinian, and healthful here, and you can also purchase the fixings for a picnic lunch. Many locals visit its self-service, buffet-style restaurant, the Weaver Street Market Café (same address and phone), where a $6 buffet (especially pleasing to vegetarians) is served on picnic tables under soaring oak trees, and where Thursday nights include performances from live jazz bands. Both the market and its restaurant are open Monday to Friday 7:30am to 9pm and Saturday and Sunday 8am to 9pm.