Things To Do In Charlotte, North Carolina

I promised you that I would give you more details about our mini-vacation and things to do in Charlotte, North Carolina…so here they are. 🙂

I WON a 3-night stay at the Double Tree. We had our own suite. I’m pretty sure it was bigger than some of my friends’ city apartments. It was awesome. I’d totally recommend it. The only negative was that whoever was staying in the room over ours seemed to have a passion for exercising at 6am, so we had a hard time sleeping in. It’s ok, you can put your tiny violin away, I’m not going to be complaining about anything on our kid-free long weekend.

We drove from PA, so we didn’t actually get to Charlotte until about 1am. They gave us cookies when we checked in and we went straight to bed.

Friday morning we got up and showered and headed out to explore.

The first thing we did was get to Sonny’s as soon as they opened. This was one of Eddie’s favorite lunch places when we lived in Tampa, so he was over the moon to find one in Charlotte. They have great barbeque and really affordable lunch time meal specials. I know it’s a chain and not true North Carolina barbeque, but to him it was a taste of our former home.

From there we decided to go to the nature museum. We wanted to see the wildlife and native plants because we’re big nerds. It turns out that it was actually a children’s museum and they thought we were creepy for being “unaccompanied adults” in their establishment.  They made my husband leave his license at the front desk.

If you are ever vacationing in Charlotte with kids, it would be a great place to check out! The elementary school science teacher in me loved it. I would definitely go back with my own kids if we are ever in Charlotte again.

We didn’t do much inside, but they did have an awesome nature trail that we hiked.

This is what Eddie does when I ask him to take a picture with me. Punk.

The museum also had a great butterfly pavilion.

Then we drove around and looked at the architecture of different older neighborhoods.

We also went to the mall that was across the street from the hotel. Eddie needed clothes for the mission trip he will be on next month and I got my eyebrows waxed. Fun times.

Friday night we had an early dinner reservation at Ruth’s Chris (That’s “our” place because we had our wedding reception at the Ruth’s Chris in Baltimore.) and then I went to the cocktail party for the blog conference I was attending.

Saturday I was in Bloggy Boot Camp all day. Eddie played golf at Ballantyne and then another course that he drove to South Carolina to play.

That night we walked across the street and had dinner at a really nice Italian restaurant in a shopping area directly across from the hotel. I didn’t write down the name of the restaurant, but I wish I had. They made all of their own pasta and the spinach lasagna was AMAZING.

Sunday we left around 9:30 am and spent all day driving home. We did get to have our first experience with Bojangles chicken and biscuits on the drive home. The sweet tea was pretty awesome and they had free WiFi, so I was a happy camper.

I wish we we would have had more time to check out some other things to do in Charlotte, but our trip was only a few days this time and one of those days I needed to spend in the conference.