Girl’s trips are something I used to do a lot of in my 20’s. I had a group of girls that I went everywhere with, including Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans. In our 30’s, however, when everyone started settling down and having children, girl’s trips became a thing of the past. That’s why I feel fortunate that I got to go on this trip to Charlotte with one of my longest and best friends, Michelle. We’ve been best friends since Kindergarten. We even lived together briefly in our college years. We lost track of each other between about 2008 to 2021 or so. I moved to Madison, she was busy raising her kids. We reunited in about 2021, and have been keeping in touch since.
In 2020 I had purchased a plane ticket because I was supposed to go to Orlando for a nursing conference that ended up being canceled due to covid. As a result, I was given a flight credit that expired at the end of 2022. I had traveled so much in 2022 that I didn’t think I could possibly fit another trip in to use up my credit on time, but I was determined to make it work and not lose all that money. I decided to invite someone along, because I was short on funds that year with all of my other trips. I immediately thought of Michelle, because she would always comment on how great my trips looked on Facebook, and how she was jealous. Her kids are teens now, and so leaving them wasn’t much of a problem. To my surprise, she said yes!!
My only stipulation for this trip was that I wanted to fly somewhere that would cost the equivalent of my credit. I didn’t want to put more money into a plane ticket simply because my credit wouldn’t cover the entire flight. Michelle and I both started researching places to go, and it was proving nearly impossible to find somewhere that we could fly to for $400+. I decided to look up Charlotte, since the flight was through American Airlines, and Charlotte is one of their major hubs. I figured it had to be cheaper to fly to a hub rather than having to get a connecting flight somewhere.
I did what I always do, and looked to see how many breweries were in the area, looked to see if there were any good street murals worth posing in front of, ran it by Michelle, and boom—our trip was born. We’ve both been to other parts of North Carolina, and it’s a state that I absolutely love, so I was excited to check out another area. She was excited to let me plan it, since she was always the one doing the planning for her family. Let me tell you, as exciting as solo travel is, it is so much fun having someone to plan and research with, and it quickly became apparent that we were very compatible in the things we are interested in. There is nothing worse than traveling with someone who commandeers a trip and doesn’t give a rat’s ass what anybody else wants to do, and fortunately Michelle was not that way at all! I’ve traveled with one of these girls, and it leads to bickering and animosity, and I’m way too old for that crap.
After looking up every single restaurant, brewery, band, mural, park, etc. and making sure we saw everything there was to see on Pinterest, we were on our way. We started out by checking into our Airbnb, which was an OK place to stay, but could have been better. I was disappointed because I wanted Michelle to experience one of the fabulous places that I’m usually really good at selecting, and this one was just a little bit dirty, and there weren’t even sheets on the bed—I had to call the host and have them drop off sheets. What the heck? That was really our only problem, and it wasn’t even really a problem to be honest, so all in all there weren’t any real complaints about this trip.
After we settled in, we took an Uber to The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery to enjoy some German food and a band. This place is so great! Our food was delicious, and the outdoor beer garden space was huge and tons of fun. From there, we walked around to several other breweries in the area including Sugar Creek and Lower Left. There were a couple of bands playing that we enjoyed, and we sampled all sorts of different beers.
Next we stopped at Brewers at 4001 Yancey, which is a brewery that combines the beers of Southern Tier, Victory, Bold Rock, and Sixpoint. These are all breweries that I’ve heard of in Wisconsin, and although I’m not super excited by any of their beers, we wanted to go here because it was close to Halloween, and they were showing the movie “It” in their beer garden. We grabbed some beers and a table outside, and watched the movie and just laughed and laughed. You know that scene, where the clown rips off someone’s arm and then uses it to wave at the group of kids that see him….yeah…I took a picture of that and when you hold it down to view the live version….maybe you had to be there. We still send that picture back and forth to each other a whole year later.
The next morning, we got up and had lunch at Suffolk Punch Brewing, walked across the street to Triple C Brewing, and then took a walking path through the streets of Charlotte to explore.
We headed toward downtown to see a wall mural that we were interested in photographing, and ended up finding a lot of adorable art. I don’t know what it is about murals, but they just make me so happy!
From there we walked to Hi-Wire Brewing (I’ve visited their Asheville location several times, so had to check out this one too), and Wooden Robot Brewery, where we sampled 2 different coffee beers. Coffee and beer are my two favorite things, so of course I’m obsessed with coffee beer.
After we got tired of drinking, we wanted to head further into downtown Charlotte to check out some more art, eat dinner, and grab dessert at a place called Day and Night Cereal Bar. Ice cream + Fruity Pebbles—you better believe I am there! We were getting kind of tired, so Michelle introduced me to Lime Scooters, which quickly became a very fun way to travel around the city for much cheaper than an actual Uber would cost. We had such a blast cruising through all of the streets.
The next morning we had reservations at a place called Smelly Cat Coffee for breakfast. The coffee was good, and so was the street mural on the side of the building, but the food was very small, and the restaurant reservation process was very strange. We ended up leaving hungry, and made our way to Reigning Donuts for a snack, snapping a few more photos of the artwork along the way, and enjoying our Lime scooters.
In the afternoon, I wanted to check out another brewery that I am familiar with from my stays in Asheville called Burial. We took a very long scooter ride to a different part of town, grabbed a couple of beers and played some cards on their rooftop patio while enjoying the sunshine. Next we went to Resident Culture Brewing, Birdsong, and Heist Brewery. We split an appetizer at Heist, and then stopped at a 2nd location of Wooden Robot. Wow, that was a lot of beer. We spent the rest of the night hanging out in our Airbnb, watching movies, and talking. Then we woke up early, ate our 2 leftover Reigning Donuts, and headed to the airport to make our way home.
On our way to the airport, we received a notification that our seats had changed on the flight. For some reason, we were both moved to different, but separate rows further back, with no explanation as to why, and even though I had an empty middle seat next to me the entire flight, Michelle was not placed next to me. We didn’t get to talk on the flight home, which was weird, and since then I have been flying Delta Airlines instead of American. Despite that small snafu, we had a great time, and I hope we get to travel together again someday soon!
+ There are no comments
Add yours