Charlotte, The Queen City

Last Friday marked the end of my externship in Winston-Salem.  I worked until afternoon, had a meeting with the residency program director (yay!), and then headed out to Charlotte to meet my husband!  Perhaps one day soon I will pontificate about Wake Forest, but for now I'll tell you about Charlotte!

It's a pretty big city.  Much bigger than Mobile but not quite as big as Birmingham or Atlanta.  It's very diverse.  You heard a pretty equal mix of English and Spanish walking along the streets and saw citizens of every color.  Don't get much of that around here.  Probably anything you could ever want to do is here, and there are an endless amount of restaurants.  That's a good thing!

Part of the skyline ... couldn't really get a good angle off the top of a parking deck - ha!

Some sort of tall building.  A bank, likely

Friday night we headed downtown for dinner at an awesome place called The King's Kitchen.  It's a not-for-profit restaurant which hires the "unhireable" (i.e., ex-inmates and at-risk youth) onto their staff and gives all the profits to feed the poor of Charlotte.  They are a Christian organization, and the food is delish just as a bonus!  So glad we went there, and wish there were more restaurants like that around.

Saturday morning we headed out to the Charlotte Regional Farmers' Market.  It was conveniently located right by our hotel.  Farmers from all over North Carolina come there daily to sale their produce.  We got a homemade cinnamon roll for breakfast, and passed by rows and rows of beets, grass fed beef, goat cheese and kale before selecting some heirloom tomatoes, fresh-picked apples, and a cooking pumpkin to take home!

Next on the list was to explore downtown.  A bummer thing about Charlotte is that it is a huge banking city and, because of that, a lot of the shops downtown are only open during banking hours.  Of course Stuart and I didn't know our way around the city too well, but a lot of the coffee shops, etc we found were closed Saturday afternoon.

Once we got hungry we found somewhere that was open, and just so happened to be a local legend:  Price's Chicken Coop.  This is a little hole in the wall in the south of the city.  It's a bit of a cross between Seinfeld's Soup Nazi and The Varsity in Atlanta.  You know you've arrived when you smell fried goodness literally two blocks away.  When you walk in, there's a simple white counter with huge deep friers behind it.  You don't take much time gazing over the simple menu because by that time there are at least 10 people behind you in line.  You tell your order to the cashier who then screams it to the frier-folks.  No worries about your drink - sweet tea is already lined up at the counter and ready to go.  Your order comes up, and then you have to find a place to eat it since there are no seats in the restaurant.  We decided to take ours to the park and figured walking a few blocks would help us burn off the grease.

The Coop

Parked on our park bench

Yes, those are chicken livers.  Stuart is gross.  I smelled one but could not bring myself to try it.  I went with fried fish instead.

After wiping the grease from our faces and finding a place to watch a little football, it was time to head out again.  We decided to go to the arts district, NoDa (North Davidson Street) for dinner and some entertainment.  It was a pretty cool part of town, but instead of wearing our Polos and pearls for me, we might should have considered skinny jeans, funky jewelry, and strange boots to fit in with the crowd.  We ate at a place called the Crepe Cellar which had, obviously, savory crepes for dinner.  We started out with a plate of brie and pesto french fries, and then moved on to our buckwheat crepes stuffed with deliciousness.  Afterward we walked down the street a bit to a venue called The Evening Muse.  This is a bar which holds about 80-100 people, and holds nightly acoustic concerts.  We heard a folksy-countryish band called Mandolin Orange.  They.  Were.  Awesome.  I'm probably going to wind up buying their CD, and you should too!

Go girl!  Play that electric guitar!

Fimally, Sunday was the day to drive the 9 hours home.  Of course, we had to fill our tummies for the ride!  For breakfast we found a place called Terrace which served red velvet waffles for Stu, and bacon belgian waffles for me!  Whoa!

Red velvet with a side of fruit for good measure

Of course, on the way home I had to hit up the local Trader Joe's to stock up on cheap organic goodness that we can't get down here on the coast, and then we found a Chipotle to satisfy Stuart for lunch in Atlanta.  We had a great drive back and obviously some good conversation during our 9 hours in the car together!  I think we were both a bit nervous we would have to "adjust" to each other again after a month apart, but there was no such thing!  In fact, on the way back we were laughing so hard Stuart spewed his Doctor Pepper all over his shorts (and my car).  Good times!

This happened when I asked Stu why Snoop Dogg carries an umbrella.  Fo' Drizzle!

It's good to be back and for our lives to be "normal" again!  Now it looks like I need to do laundry ...