The McGill Rose Garden is a wonderful starting and stopping place for the gallery crawls that they host. I've been to a couple of them, and they're a lot of fun. The gallery crawl is a great alternative night out on the town if you're finding bar crawling to be tiresome.
McGill Rose Garden is a bit in-between uptown and NoDa, so it can be really peaceful there. Since admission is free, it's nice to take lunch outdoors there when it's not so freakin' cold.