We are back from our fabulous vacation. We had a great time with the family and followed it up with a tour of NC. Basically it involved us eating as many hush puppies, and fried pickles as possible. I went through double of my heart burn medication and gained 5 lbs! It was a great time!
First, in Wilmington, we had Kristin and Pete to take us around. Pete brews his own beer and, until recently, worked for Mother Earth Brewers (local microbrew in their area of NC). So he took us to his favorite beer shop and a couple cool places that served some of the specialty beers. We enjoyed live music at a couple places as well. Unfortunately, one of the places had this amazing outdoor area with this beautiful large tree that we sat under and my ankles were savegly attacked by mosquitos. This proved quite annoying for several days. Also, we visited the cotton exchange which was next door to our condo. By the way, our condo was great! Beautiful view of the river and the battleship, very comfortable temporpedic mattress and high powered air conditioning! We went to an art festival which was fun. Kristin later led us to these great boutiques which had all of these amazing dresses, shoes, purses, hats, etc. It was the kind of place that I would consider heaven. I picked up a pair of grey/silver wedges. We visited the beach just for a look as well. We went out to eat at this Thai restaurant that was about the coolest restaurant I've seen. So many decorations and outdoor gardens with koi ponds and such. Our last morning we went out for an all you can eat brunch where I hit up the biscuits and gravy, eggs bendidict, lox, crepes...you name it!
After that, It was on to Asheville. It took nearly 6 hours to get there and our radio in the car was less that ideal...our antennea was gone so we only got one or two radio stations. But we made it. Asheville can be described perfectly by a tshirt I saw in a store there...."Asheville. Fun Place. Weird people." We figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't a place for two dentists to start their practice. Average age in 20s and serious hippie theme. It was like once you arrive in Asheville, you don't shower for a week, only wear the clothes you found on the floor and spend your time walking your dog around or playing spoons on the street corner for cash. Plus, they hate tourists, which is funny considering all the 20 somethings are coming from somewhere. But they have some awesome restaurants and a great music scene. We would wake up and have our free breakfast at our hotel downtown which included the best breakfast ever invented...crab cake eggs bendidict. It was two crab cakes and over easy eggs each on an english muffin half with a nice sauce. Then we would go driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway and stop for hiking. One day we hiked for 4 miles or so and saw all these waterfalls. Then we found a random BBQ restaurant, Hawg Wild, which was great. At that time, Brian and I discovered a real problem in our relationship. He's Western North Carolina BBQ and I'm Eastern North Carolina BBQ. Luckily we both love hushpuppies or it could have been over. Our last night, we had Indian food, which we love, then went to an old fashioned cocktail lounge and finished up at this brewery that was advertising ragtime music. It was like being in an old time western saloon. There was a guy playing a huge stringed bass. The other was playing the piano. It was a sight to be seen. The piano player wore a fedora and big sunglasses, the bass player had long hair in a pony tail. I have some video on my phone, but I don't know how good it is.
Then off to Charlotte. First of all, there was a heat index over 100 everyday we were there and the heat index stayed above 90 until about 730 at night. This greatly affected our plans. It was too hot for a minor league baseball game and a lot of walking around the city. But we drove around. Brian wanted to scope out Lake Norman and Lake Wylie. Figured out which areas had high traffic, ruled out areas which sketchy neighborhoods and estimated drive times. Our hotel was right downtown and was nice until fri/sat night when all these partiers showed up and would keep us up until after 3am. Yes, we called the front desk and moved rooms, only to be across from a different group of partiers. We just gave up because we were tired of moving rooms. But we enjoyed our time in town. We took the light rail train to the south end of town..trendy area. We also toured a very swanky apartment area that would be about as expensive as here, but was fun to tour. They had a rooftop pool, exercise center, free coffee, a movie screening room, pool tables, tv lounge...you name it. We went to Art after Dark one night. They have that here....where you can go into the art museum after hours and tour exhibits. They had extra exhibitions and a fashion show. It was fun. We also went to an English pub and got my favorite....ploughmans platter. They had live music too. Irish fiddle and guitar player that also played the harmonica. The last day we went to the Levine museum which was a history museum of Charlotte. That was cool. We learned all about cotton and textiles, and the old and new south. During our time in Charlotte, Brian and I somehow got hooked on fried pickles and it is a new obscession of mine. Of course, now that vacation is over I can't go around eating fried pickles at every meal, but I sure will resume at my next vacation!
Our last night, I didn't fall asleep until after midnight and then got woken up by the bachelor party at 330am. Our wake up call was 430 and flight at 730am. We flew to San Fran. It is the worst airport layout of all time. We were running like crazy all over the airport to get to our terminal. We even had to leave security and go back in to get to our terminal. Disaster! We got to our flight just as they were calling zone 4 (us). Our next flight was nice, 5 hours with the extra legroom. But we were exhausted. Our luggage was literally the last two pieces off the baggage line. We got home, had no food...so we went to Costco. But it was crazy there because it is the day that everyone gets their food stamps. So we battled with the crowds and got home. Brian was ready to sit down, relax and watch his recorded play offs. Only...our TV was broken. The TV has been problematic but working for the past 4 months. Of course it dies now. So, back to Costco. Picked up a 37" LCD tv and back home to set it up. We were having a hard time setting it up because we were so tired. But we got it set up and Brian got to watch the game.
Basically, we had a great vacation. We are now resting up and ready to pack it up out here. Today Brian assembled over 60 picture frame corners and we started calling around to get info about movers in GR. I will post pictures later this week...too tired right now!
