...all these were waiting for me. I have some serious blogging to be catching up on this week! Not to mention I have a Love with Food box review to finish up.
On to the good stuff! My mom and I left Thursday Oct 18th (sadly I had to miss and art class) and made it past the VA/NC border in 2 hours. We stopped at a Chic-fil-a to go potty and get some food. When we went inside, we really felt like we were on display. People were just staring and making us uncomfortable. When we got to the bathroom we checked ourselves but not a hair was out of place nor was anything in our teeth. Mom says to me "Is it just me, or were they all staring?" to which I replied "Nope, not just you. And thank God because at least they don't think we are locals!".
Three hours more in the car and we finally arrive at the Westin Hotel in Charlotte.
Here is the view from our room on the 19th floor. I have to thank my dad for this, I am deathly afraid of heights and I couldn't even walk on that side of the room with out feeling dizzy and my legs feeling weak.
So excited to see my brother, my mom and I slipped into some clothes for dinner and off we went to go pick up my bro from the dorm. While heading there, we were looking for a place for my mom to get gas. We drove past the dorm (Ev was still getting ready) and headed down the street. BIG mistake. We learned that "if you pass the Bojangles, you have gone too far!".....seriously. We were in the part of town that would make you really uncomfortable if your car broke down. Basically for the rest of the trip, if we passed a Bojangles establishment, we just turned around. It was like the demarcation line for the city limits.
After picking Evan up he directed us to this place called Basil Thai which he had said he walked past a few times and it smelled delicious. When we got there at 6 pm the place was dead, but by the time we got our salads it was filling up quickly. Evan and I really enjoyed the food. I had a salad with palm greens that was light, crunchy and delicious and we all shared the Pad Thai and the Cashew Nuts entrees. The flavors were great, the textures of the foods were great and we left with a bunch of leftovers. Mom, we learned, is not really that into Thai food :(
This is my brother and I before our food came out. What's that you ask? Is he Asian? Why, I never noticed! Ha ha ha, just kidding! My brother was adopted from Korea when he was 1 year old and I was 10 years old. He is so independent now. I never saw that coming when he was younger.
After some "Heavenly Showers" and good night's sleep, we were ready to tackle Friday. Evan wanted to go get some breakfast and head Concord Mills outlet mall. This was kind of neat because the mall makes a huge circle so you can enter, walk all the way around and not back track, and leave. We stopped in a few stores and working at the GNC is where I saw THE ONLY HOT GUY IN MY ENTIRE TRIP. Yeah, you read that correctly. This boy was built like a line backer, had a gorgeous face with brown hair and brown eyes and a nice tan. If he worked at the one here at home, I would go in every day for a protein bar LOL.
After the mall, Evan made reservations for us at Morton's Steakhouse. We all got ready and re-convened at the dorms. The assistant manager, Kevin, was incredibly nice and took a picture of the three of us......I would share it but I look like shit :) Our waitress, I feel bad I can't remember her name, was amazing! She was upbeat, knew the menu and what to suggest, and even allowed us to split their enormously large bibb salad and french onion soup three-ways so we could all have some and not have to take a million left overs home. The dinner, the service, (and the wine) was great and our waitress suggested, since Evan is going to school to be a chef, that he talk to Kevin about a job. We gathered our stuff to leave and wouldn't you know, my brother was going to punk out! So I grabbed Kevin and asked him about job opportunities for him and wouldn't you know, Kevin said they were hiring and they would love to have him. They set up a meeting for next week so Evan could fill out an application and discuss his school schedule. I am incredibly happy for him!
The Duke Energy building was lit up with pink lights that night. We took a nice walk after dinner and tried to move around all that food in our bellies. The whole city was decked out in pink lights, banners and ribbons for breast cancer awareness. It was very cool.
Then Saturday came. Did I mention that there were a ton of things going on for the parents this weekend at the college and we did not partake in any of them? Yeah, we are a bit anti-social. We started the day with some Starbucks, as usual.....
...checked some emails on the phones, updated my dad on how the trip was going and checked on the puppies. Then we headed off to the quad to see the ice sculpting demo by some of the students.
Sadly, we never did get to see what the end results were. We got impatient and set out on our walking tour of Charlotte. We walked over to the Bechtler Modern Art Museum. I felt bad for missing my class on Thursday so I figured I would get some art in on my trip.....
....this is the very cool Andy Warhol "family portrait" you can see in their lobby. We paid $8 a person to see the rest of the tiny museum. The top floor was their Giacometti family exhibit, which was terrible. Feel free to look it up, but just remember I told you so.
This is a bronze statue of a horse with my brother in the background. We were laughing because this statue looks a lot like our fox hound, Tucker.
This is the view from a balcony in the museum. On the right you can see our hotel! And it got me thinking that I think I can see the museum from our room.....
.....so when I went back to the room later I looked and sure enough! The arrow is pointing to where I stood when I took the picture above. Besides the Andy Warhol and the bathrooms, this was the coolest thing about the art museum. Sad really.
Here are the bathrooms by the way. Still better than the Giacometti exhibit and the bathrooms were entirely free.
And here is the little pin that is my proof that I did some extra credit on my trip. I really hope my teacher gives me class credit for the day I missed. Its not that I need it, its the point that I go above and beyond ha ha ha!
Outside the museum, there was a guy on a soapbox yelling into a microphone that was blasting his plight about religion and politics. Ugh, I seriously can't wait until the elections are over. Here is one of the protesters in front of one of the art pieces. Initially I thought this dude ruined my picture, but when I looked at it again I realized that if his ugly fat ass wasn't standing there, the statue would not look beautiful. I saw the statue when we first drove into the city and thought it was ugly as hell. Just proves that perspective is everything.
After the museum we continued our walk up Levine Avenue of the Arts. We ran into some really cool things. First we came along this fountain with bronze children playing in the water.
Then we came to Bank of America Square. On the corners there were all these tall statues of people and on the backs it said "Transportation" and "Industry". This one is of a lady holding up a baby. I didn't ever get to see what it said on her back though...
There were a bunch of horse drawn carriages that were being run around the city, but this one was by far the coolest. This horse, decked out in the pink mane, tail, and hooves pulls up in front of one of the buildings that was completely decked out in Susan G. Komen breast cancer posters.
One of the buildings was completely pink! I don't know what building it was, but the building in the foreground was the Harvey B. Gantt African American History museum and had "America I Am" in front of it....Shouldn't it be "American, I Am"?
After we walked back to the dorms and dropped Evan off so we could get ready for our dinner at The Capital Grille, we drove by the Bank of America Stadium. My mom really wanted a picture of the panthers that were outside and I was able to snap this photo on the drive.
The next day, this place was swarming with people for the Carolina/Dallas football game. I have NEVER seen anything like it.People parked everywhere, grills going in parking lots, every person in a jersey or t-shirt, streets blocked off, people not driving correctly.....it makes me thankful I am not into football. We had a quick breakfast with Evan at the Starbucks across from his dorm, he gave me a notebook that he bought me that says "keep calm and carry on" and we said our goodbyes.
I was really sad to leave because I miss him so much, I love the city life, and there was so much more that I wanted to do down there. But I also missed my Bentley and knew I had a lot of school work to come home too. Evan said we will see him for Thanksgiving in 3 weeks, so I guess I need to get my ass in gear to prepare!
Jenn
No comments:
Post a Comment