TIFTON — Raleigh made me well, helped me feel superb. Seems to be the purpose behind much of what happens in this North Carolina city. Feeling good.

Chef Chad McIntyre of Market Restaurant says, “The yin and yang of a meal is how it tastes and how it makes you feel.”

The North Carolina Museum of Art wraps the science of light around their collections in a new building of many galleries, using north-facing louvers and filters to diffuse the light, protect the works and give visitors full spectrum light to feel well.

“We’re a primary healthcare provider,” says chef owner Arthur Gordon at Irregardless Café.

“I’ve been cooking eco-friendly food for 36 years, like a jazz musician, always practicing. I understand the nuances of how to put foods together.

“Spirituality is at work here,” Gordon suggests.

This was my first visit to Raleigh, a shame I waited a lifetime. Eating and art are superb and so are music, history and science.

Live music is easy to find with performances in some of the 85 venues large and small every week all year.  

Hopscotch is the local favorite, a September music fest featuring 175 bands in at least 15 venues. 2012 dates are Sept. 6 – 8 in downtown Raleigh.

Year-round works for science too, but the blockbuster dates are April 20-21 next year when the Daily Planet opens at the new Nature Research Center.

Hard to wrap my mind around a project as profound as this one, but I’m certain “Go there” is good advice. This center intends to help people like me understand how science research affects everyday life.

Creating connections between science and citizens is Betsy Bennett’s global reach in Raleigh. She is the executive director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences that is launching this creative, interactive, science-based environmental center.

Brilliant actually.  How we know is the focus, engaging visitors with researchers often in real time thanks to top-notch technology. Much more than “what we know” kind of exhibits normally in museums.

How about actually talking about deepwater coral with the eminent scientist while she’s in a research submersible?

Or taking part in global town halls, two of which will happen during the April opening.

The outline is endless and visitors will access life sciences, genomics, cellular research, nanotechnology, weather, paleontology and much more in the Daily Planet, truly a globe shaped building – multimedia galore throughout all four stories.

NASA will share Hubble Space Telescope images and the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute will provide real time telescope images.

Dust-free this sphere because of the sensitive tools and very green, as in LEED certified gold anticipated.

Planners for the Nature Research Center are pumped about the potential, and so am I, but in the meantime Raleigh keeps on creating new wonders.

“Rembrandt in America” opened a three-city national exhibition Oct. 30 at the North Carolina Museum of Art, moving next year to Cleveland and Minneapolis.

“The Story of North Carolina” opened at the state Museum of History Nov. 5, a permanent gallery with clear and engaging graphics, music, dioramas, multimedia and interactive ways to consider history.

A special emphasis I appreciated are brief bios of women and men I never heard of, people in community through the centuries, engaged in life.

Powerful to stand before the quilt sewn by Ann Knox with scraps of fabric she had used to make clothes to send her sons to the Confederate Army.

Simply fun exhibits too, like the history and evolution of the Plott hound, the only dog breed originated in North Carolina.

Marbles is the name of the children’s museum, another Raleigh destination with exciting graphics and games, everything touchable. Art and engineering intersect often.

Newness here too with the wing devoted to brains and bodies undergoing massive graphic and activity center changes. The new emphasis? Healthy food, active fun.

Three to eight are the optimum ages at Marbles, with an IMAX theater enticing all others. So does Curiosity Square where silly things happen every day at 2 p.m. with animators.

I was surprised my morning visit with the number of children using crutches; as I wound my way through an aquarium and forest, railroad yard, farm and farmer’s market, plus a small performance stage, I realized one gallery with an ambulance is all about helping children understand healthcare. Those crutches are for experimenting and learning.

Another section is filled with tools, workbenches and safety supervisors encouraging confidence. Big blocks and Legos in one wing and real tools in another.

Sewing, drawing, painting and creating with many implements spill into galleries and hallways.

Marbles frames the north side of Moore Square, a wonderful downtown park with benches, paved paths, green space and a giant acorn sculpture.

City Market fills the other side with four blocks of eateries, little shops, streets and buildings of brick and ArtSpace —studios and galleries with 33 artists creating new works.

Inspiring creative energy is the goal at ArtSpace and that includes Saturday classes that Raleigh visitors can sign up for.

I liked watching painters, jewelers and designers at work, and I appreciated the energy angle since I had eaten breakfast at Big Ed’s City Market Restaurant before visiting ArtSpace.

The pancakes are built from the owner’s great-grandmother’s pound cake recipe and my waitress has been serving folks at Big Ed’s for 16 years; pretty good indication customers are happy.

Ed is big in trademark red plaid shirt and overalls, and his menu favors sausage, fried catfish, fatback, beef bologna, local eggs sometimes scrambled with pork brains and red- neck English muffins.

That, my server Lynette told me, is a fresh biscuit cut in half, fried and buttered. I didn’t add jelly.

Quite a different style at my Raleigh lunch and dinner restaurants with chefs skilled in vegan, vegetarian and gluten free cuisine also featuring some meats and fish.

  Honeybees buzz on the roof at Market Restaurant, nestled in a neighborhood, fresh herbs grow on the patio.

Chef Chad McIntyre determines his menus with what’s fresh and local; Raleigh has a daily farmer’s market plus a Wednesday version in the heart of downtown.

This city sets up white-topped tents each week to invite farmers, residents and visitors to embrace fresh local food. Nice way to be a government.

Bluefish tacos were spectacular, as were crispy chips of baked kale, hand cut potatoes tossed in truffle oil and sweet potato nachos topped with chow-chow made and canned by the chef.

“Used to be considered trash fish,” he says of the blue, “but it’s delicious and sustainable.”  

Next door I sipped a cup of old Spanish hot chocolate, and bought some bars of single origin, “we-know-where-the-beans-grew” chocolate.

Hallot Parson chooses his cacao beans from small family growers Costa Rica and Venezuela and then he does all the rest.

“Might be 25 of us total creating artisan chocolates this way,” he says, adjusting the 1920s stone grinder where he turns cacao beans into fine powder.

Chocolate to drink is new at Escazu Artisan Chocolates, but very old in history. Extensive research led to the creation of his recipes: 1549 Spain, 1670 from Italy, 1692 from France and a pre-Columbian brew.

Spending my after-lunch afternoon at the North Carolina Museum of Art gave me inside and outdoor walking options.

Commissioned works of art appear along paved walkways and natural hiking trails in the Museum Park: easy strolls with picnic spots and longer steeper paths in prairie and woodlands, some hills.  Get the map from the Museum front desk.

Choose the longest walk to the west and go into Umstead Park and Schenck Forest. I figured that out too late to try but I did discover a lovely hotel and spa on the other side of that forest.

Umstead is its name too, full of art by North Carolina artists, nature-based mostly. Eighty-one works detailed on a self-guided tour brochure.

Breakfast was my experience — crab cake Benedict with a tomato slice topped with crumpled basil and breadcrumbs.

Enjoy tiny details and design elements throughout the restaurant and hotel, from the shape of the coffee cup and cream pitcher to lighting and fresh flower displays.

Goodnight is the name of the family owners, also the brains behind SAS, a Statistical Analysis System company next door. Check that out because Fortune named it the best place to work for 2010 and 2011, and a top ten the past decade.

“Raleigh is just so progressive,” Betsy Bennett told me when I was learning about the blockbuster April opening for the Daily Planet and Nature Research Center.

I believe it to be so.