I really wasn't wild about living in the South - I'm from Michigan originally, went to school in upstate NY, and now I live in NYC, so I am a northerner for sure. Charlotte is a nice enough city but there isn't a lot of nightlife or a very big arts scene (I'm an opera singer, so that's important to me). I visited Raleigh several times while I was there and I found it to be a much less conservative, more fun town than Charlotte. That said, the weather is really nice (at least in the fall through spring), and if you're into gardening it would be a great place to live. Charlotte always just seemed a little stuffy/uptight to me.