We hired a car for the weekend from Enterprise (because they will come and pick you up and they have a very reasonable Weekend Special which comes in at $39 – or two pizzas).  Their driver was in Beaufort collecting other people and so I piled in with three others.  There was an Australian couple from a boat anchored in the harbour who were hiring a car to pick up the guy’s brother.  They were going to sail back to Sydney – although the woman said she was reserving the right to change her mind when they got to Panama.  When we got to the rental office they went first and when the girl behind the desk checked their documentation she turned to the woman and said “Oh!  Happy Birthday!”.  Well! I wish you could have seen the guy’s face…he obviously didn’t have a clue!!  The Australian woman blushed, the guy blustered and then the Enterprise lady got embarrassed and apologised for having mentioned it!

I had quite a wait which gave me an opportunity to chat to the clerk who told me the on-line system permitted any number of people to reserve cars without interfacing with the system showing how many cars they actually had available.  People who had rented cars for Thanksgiving had obviously decided not to rush to get them back at the designated time and I listened to her fending off any number of irate clients.  My car had to be brought over from New Bern (about an hour away), however I did get a better model….I’m driving a lovely pale green Beetle.

I’m afraid the weather has deteriorated (though not to the point of snow with which you have been blessed in the UK).  The direction of the wind changed and it was positively chilly today.  Tonight the temperature is forecast to drop to near zero. 

Today we went over to New Bern – about 45 miles from Beaufort – the architecture has a Swiss air (see below).  They have also adopted the same Bear symbol as Berne in Switzerland and there are any number of them around the town in various guises (this is Bear Judge and Bear Champion).

We looked around their historical site consisting the Governor’s House (burned down in the 1700’s but reconstructed in the early 50’s) and three homes of wealthy merchants which have been relocated from other sites.  New Bern is also the home of Pepsi and we saw the pharmacy(!) where it was invented.