I lived in Birmingham, Ala., right out of college, working at an afternoon newspaper, the Birmingham Post-Herald, which closed down in 2005. I wasn't there at the end, having started my job at the Gazette in late 2001, but I was both sad and angry when a former colleague called to tell me my old paper would cease operation that day. I contacted friends and colleagues to commiserate. Some still worked at the paper, but many had left, as I had, to avoid a fate we all knew was inevitable due to rapidly declining circulation and market forces beyond our control. I felt real grief the day the Post-Herald folded. It was like someone I really cared about had died.

When I tell people from the North (yankees, as they're called in the South) that I once lived in Alabama, they often respond with a mixture of curiosity and shock. "How did you like it down there?" they ask, as if nobody in their right mind would willingly to move to such a place. I admit that in high school I harbored certain prejudices about the South. I associated it with Jim Crow, and black schoolchildren getting blasted by firehoses, and all sorts of terrible things. But in college my opinion began to change. Some of the coolest people I met were from the South, and I decided that any region that produced such cool people couldn't possibly be all bad. And so when the Post-Herald called to offer me a job, I decided to go.

I only lived in Birmingham for three years, but I have a level of affection for the city that's much deeper than my affection for Albany, where I live now, and I like Albany a lot. Maybe it's because Birmingham was more of an adventure -- I drove down there by myself, from New Hampshire, all of my belongings packed into a Ford Escort, to start my first job at a real newspaper. It was early December, and I remember crossing over the Georgia border and stopping at a rest area to change into shorts and a T-shirt. I was nervous, but also excited, and Birmingham didn't disappoint me. It was a vibrant, lively city, and there was always some exciting news to cover, a murder or scandal or crazy feature story that just had to be written. There were a lot of young people working at the paper, and excursions to The Garage, my favorite bar in the world, were a common occurrence. I made some very good friends during my short stint in Birmingham, and so while most people probably don't think of the South as much of a vacation destination, I do. I love going there.

Many of my Birmingham friends have scattered, and so in mid-March I booked a trip to Durham, N.C., to visit my friend Adam, who I got to know when he worked at the Post-Herald as a photographer, his wife Susie, who didn't work at the Post-Herald but is also a photographer, and their children, John, 5, and Rosie, 3. I booked the trip in mid-March, when I was sick of winter and felt like I would go crazy if I didn't have some kind of change in scenery.

It wasn't Birmingham, but Durham contained enough of the things I like about the South that I found myself vaguely wishing I lived there, which is something that often happens when I visit Birmingham. It was warm out, for one thing. (One of my first questions, upon my return, was, "Why is it so cold here?") In Durham, there was a certain friendliness and energy that I often find lacking in the Capital Region -- the feeling that if you go out you'll bump into all sorts of interesting friends and acquaintances, and they'll be excited to see you and hang out for hours. I think they know how to relax a little better in the South -- to just sit outside with a beer and tell jokes and stories and unwind without constantly demonstrating how busy and important they are. Of course, there are things that annoy me about the South, but I wasn't there long enough to experience them. For instance, nobody I met asked me whether I'm saved, or where I go to church, or suggested that maybe I should go to church. In any case, I had a wonderful time, although kids change things. (No late nights at local bars, for one thing.) I attended a Little League game, and a birthday party; I also played chess for the first time in who knows how long. Adam teamed up with John, who kept referring to the pawns as poetry. As in, "We just took your poetry," or "We have more poetry than you." I like that -- a game where the winner gets more poetry.

And if you happen to be in Durham, swing by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. They had a lot of interesting paintings and sculptures, including an exhibition, titled "Birth of the Cool," of work by Barkley L. Hendricks, a painter best known for his portraits of people of color. I've decided that a fun thing to do on trips -- particularly to cities and towns that are not regarded as meccas for tourists -- is visit the local art museum. These museums are seldom as big or as magnificent as what you'll find in a major city, but they always contain their share of treasures. Like Durham, the Nasher didn't disappoint.