Week 4 (Continued)-Charlotte (The Queen City)

Hello Family and Friends,

I had to spit our 2nd week in Charlotte into two post. There was just too much to see and do while we were there.

We went to this nice restaurant located in The Bohemian Hotel. The hotel itself has it's own garden, which we did not go to on account of the rain. The appetizers were excellent! The lobster bisque was so rich and not too salty. The steak skewer was cooked to absolute perfection. Our main dishes were the roasted lamb and the halibut. Both were oh so good. The halibut was flaky and the roasted lamb was just melt in your mouth good. Even Atlas devoured his burger (just the patty) and fruit. They even offered a private label aged bourbon that Brett tried. It was a quality bourbon but a little spicy for our taste.

Atlas playing peek-a-boo after dinner

Atlas laughing at himself playing peek-a-boo

There was an even more over the top restaurant we went to in Uptown called Deluxe. They brought Atlas water with dry ice and a floating rubber ducky (yay! more bath toys!) and my wings were covered in gold leaf. Brett said that the gold is edible, but I much rather just wear gold and not ingest it.

Atlas was not very impressed with his dry ice display, but when we showed him the mirror it was placed on he fell in love (with his reflection?).

I think there is more gold than chicken (oh yeah and a cheetah...leopard?)

Atlas with his dinosaur and mountain of pancakes. No, the dinosaur isn't edible

One night, Brett and I did escape and went on a date, We went to a white table cloth dinner at the Fig Tree at the Lucas House. Our server, Joel, really made our meal special. Once he found out that we were doing a road trip he gave us quite a few recommendations for when we get to the west coast. After dinner we went to a comedy show and saw Liz Miele backstage! Liz's advice? When you meet someone that does something that makes no sense just say "oh they must have Autism" and it will make you less upset (This has helped me in dealing with Brett). We returned to our car and yet another ticket! Brett is fighting these even after we left. We ended the night watching a live 90s rock band at Goldies. We were taken back to the 90s as we had to yell to talk to each other, but it was a lot of fun! You may ask what did we do with Atlas? We left him with Bruce, who is 36 in dog years and a great guard dog...and Atlas is almost 2 so we figures he could mostly handle himself. However, just in case we used Ashley from a local babysitting service. We wish we could take her with us, she was so good with Atlas!

Comedians Liz Miele and Neil Rubenstein at the comedy club in Charlotte

Danielle and Brett at Goldies with two photobombers who we did end up yelling with for the night.

So the whole time we were in Charlotte, we were staying in Uptown, but hadn't really toured Uptown itself. So we finally got around to touring our own neighborhood (I think all the graveyards at the beginning of the trip were a turn off). We did find this super neat place called The Market at 7th street (blue line stop). It is a local eatery food hall that is 7 days a week with a pop up farmer's market across the street once a month (which we just so happened to catch).

A sign located in The Market

Just some facts about Charlotte that was located in The Market. FYI, Queens road is one of many locations where there is a concentration of mansions.

Even though the Market was really a cool place, our general feeling about Uptown is that it lacks verve. We heard it described it as an AI generated city. It's like it has all the ingredients, but they weren't quite put together correctly. Uptown has all these mid rises with retail on the first floor, as it should be. But all the retail is fairly brand new without any old school charm. Furthermore, we were wondering, where are all the people who live in these high rises. The barber we went to told us that the high rises are full of people, but post covid, people just stay in. The city is there, it's just not being used.

A "real" building in Charlotte that feels AI generated "American City Building" (where I'm sure they do "important American city building stuff")

Brett did note that Charlotte is very easy to drive around, You can get pretty much anywhere within in the city within 20 min. However, the driving patterns and setup are among the worst he has ever seen. Now some of the chaos has to do with the way the roads are constructed, such as (here comes a long list): lights to brighten the interstate were just off, at night, in the rain; there were no on/off ramps to limited access roads, you go from stop to 55mph; walk signs will tell you to cross while the traffic turning has a blinking yellow to yield to drivers and not pedestrians; drivers will just wave at you, as the pedestrian, while you are in the crosswalk instead of stopping.

Check out our City Scores post to see how Charlotte neighborhoods compared to ATL!

We'll see you guys in Raleigh!