Our instructor kept coming up with catchy little ways to get us to remember all the icons in the program. Things like, "Don't click on the little door icon in the upper corner of the screen. That'll log you out of the program completely. Think of it like the door to a party. If you click on it, you'll leave the party! And you don't want to do that!" In truth, I very much wanted to leave this party, but I got where she was going with the analogy, as patronizing as it was. Then she came up with this little diddy, "Select the task from the drop-down menu and click the 'Go' button. It's like that old show, Inspector Gadget. Whenever he wanted to do something he had to say, 'Go, go, Gadget!' So this is our go-go-Gadget button!" Ugh. Fine, it's a go-go-Gadget button. It may be hard to believe, but we are all adults who don't need Inspector Gadget analogies to help us to understand how to click a button.
I spoke too soon. The group from Vegas just absolutely loved these analogies the instructor had come up with. Every chance they got they proclaimed, "Whoa, I almost clicked the party door!" Whenever our instructor told us to click the 'Go' button, a Vegas-er would say, "Go, Go, Gadget!!!" God, are you kidding me? You don't need to repeat the damn party door/Gadget analogies every time there's a beat of silence in the room. On top of that, the one that was particularly computer-challenged would constantly hum the Jeopardy song whenever her page took a while to load. My boss and I would just exchange glances at one another and read each other's minds throughout the length of class. At least the food was good. We got lunch vouchers in addition to the morning coffee/water vouchers, so in theory, we could pile our trays with $50 worth of cafeteria food and they couldn't say anything about it because the voucher had no maximum. None of us did this, and I wound up eating the same sandwich I had eaten on Tuesday, but I was glad knowing that we could essentially clean out every bag of chips in the building and there was nothing they could do about it because they had given us the vouchers. After lunch, our instructor announced that we were all invited to dinner at Dos Taquitos that night, a mile away from the hotel, with all expenses paid. The Vegas group jumped on the offer. Our group was kind of put on the spot because the Vegas drunks all turned to us at the same time and screamed, "YOU GUYS SHOULD TOTALLY COME!! WILL YOU GUYS COME??!" I just stared at my computer screen. Don't make eye contact, that's important. My boss answered with, "We have plans, sorry." Thank God I had her there to say everything I was thinking. What was bizarre was that the two women we had traveled with actually wanted to go! They spent yesterday afternoon at the mall across from the hotel window-shopping at stores featured in every other mall in the country and, on their last night in Raleigh, they wanted to go a mile down the street to a Mexican restaurant that serves microwaved chimichangas? Do you know how many Dos Taquitos equivalents there are where we live? That's like eating at McDonald's when you're vacationing in Europe. I know they are there and you conceivably could eat there... but you don't eat there. What was even more dumbfounding was the fact that they were willing to put up with the Vegas group for an entire evening. I took a deep breath and was just glad that my boss and I could venture downtown again to see some new sights and have a good time.
Luckily for us, it was warmer this day than Tuesday had been and we got out of class around 3:30 which was about an hour and a half earlier than Tuesday. That meant we had more time to walk around before it got dark and our chances of staying warmer, longer, were greatly improved. As soon as the manic shuttle driver docked at the hotel, we hopped in a cab and off we went. This time we started at the capitol building.
It's hard to tell from this picture, but the roof was green and there was a really pretty dome at the tippy top. Across the street there was a church that matched and I just appreciated the fact that they were the same colors, so I took a picture of that, too.
We then ventured down Fayettville Street, which gave off more of a "city" feel than the street we had explored the previous day. Call me crazy, but I'm thinking this was due to the very tall buildings.
See that building wayyy off in the distance? That is the Center for Performing Arts. We walked to it because, dammit, we were exploring.
I gotta say, I was peeved the fountain out front wasn't turned on when we got there. I guess they turn it off once they lock the doors for the evening. It would have made for a much better picture, so I'm holding a grudge. After peeking in the windows, we walked all the way back up Fayettville Street, plus five or so more blocks to the Executive Mansion.
Neither of us knew what this building was for - was it someone's home? Was it an office building that used to be someone's home? We didn't particularly care because it was gorgeous and gigantic and that's really all that mattered to us. There were humongous wrought-iron gates on all sides of it, with security cameras and little buzzers so they could open the gates for you from inside. We debated pressing the button to see if we would make the cut but decided we were too hungry for any of that.
We walked four blocks back the way we had come to a place called Sitti, a Lebanese restaurant. It was absolutely delicious, and it had just gotten dark by the time we were done eating. Luckily for us, our cab driver was Middle Eastern and knew exactly where this place was located. He arrived within 15 minutes and brought us back to the hotel. It felt good knowing we had gotten more accomplished downtown. We ventured to a lot of little places that I just didn't take pictures of, as well as to some places I did take pictures of but they just weren't blog-worthy (including a church that was built in 1804. I found that cool simply because it's so freaking old). I easily could spend a week in Raleigh and not run out of things to do. They have museums, concerts, awesome food, historic tours, the works. And the whole place is so CLEAN! You can tell there has been a lot of money put toward the upkeep of that place. Makes coming home extra disappointing.
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