After several years of hiatus from writing this blog, we are finally back! Yes, there are a lot of posts to come from places like Iceland, Hawaii, Mexico, and many more!!

We had a wedding for our cousin to attend in Toronto, Canada this summer so we decided to visit some of the Southern United States which is something we haven’t explored much yet. Many friends have recommended visiting North and South Carolina, so we chose those destinations for this vacation and we thought would be an easier location with a 1.5 year old as it is a more mellow type of trip.

Our first stop was the city of Charlotte in North Carolina. This was a quick stop just to stay the night for the drive to the town of Ashville the next day. Charlotte is the 16th-most populous city in the U.S. and it is the third-fastest-growing major city in the United States

The flight was about 4.5 hours from San Diego and this time we decided to buy Ariela her own seat. What a difference that made as she was able to sleep some of the flight and we were able to relax as well and Ariela began to develop her love for airplanes! After renting the car we drove straight to the hotel.

Something that we found interesting is that most hotels did not offer a crib, so we really needed to call many hotels before booking. This hotel was nice, and after some freshening up we drove downtown.

We had zero expectations of Charlotte as it was just a stop needed to get to our real destinations, but the city blew us away. The downtown area is beautiful, walkable, and has a great history and great restaurants.

It took us a while to get downtown because there was a soccer game going on. Who knew Charlotte had an MLS team? Not us!

We were starving from the long flight so we sat down at a restaurant called Tupelo Honey which is a very famous chain around this area that serves traditional Southern food, aka Fried Chicken, Collard Greens, Grits, etc… (not great if you are on a diet!!)

The food was good but not exceptional. Here Eitan discovered he does not like collard greens at all, and the fried chicken was disappointing considering it is their staple dish.

After lunch/dinner we walked around the beautiful downtown. The streets are full of historical markers explaining incredibly important events in US history that happened in those exact streets.

There were a lot of bars with rich histories, like this Irish pub established in 1880!

One of the surprises that we didn’t know was this city was the headquarters of Bank of America. They have a beautiful building that reeks Benjamins. It literally smells like money. They have beautiful murals inside that we were able to go see, but not photograph. The door is opened by not 1, but 2 ladies whose only job is to open the door for you. Can you imagine having this much money and not getting an automated door for the building?

The Bank of America Corporate Center, the tallest building in Uptown with a crown on top, has been a staple in Charlotte since construction finished in 1992.

Unless you work at Bank of America, not many people have been inside the building. The lobby is open to the public and has some unique pieces of art that people are talking about.

There are 3 panels of paintings that are 23 feet wide by 18 feet tall. The pieces are painted by North Carolina artist Ben Long.

The meaning behind the art is debatable among visitors, but experts say each panel has to do with Buddhist philosophy.

We then visited the Romare Bearden Park which is right in the middle of Downtown. The park is nice, but there were a bunch of people doing wheelies in the pedestrian path. One of those guys almost crashed into us, so we kept the visit short.

It was getting dark so we started our walk to the car to get back to the hotel. Unfortunately, we really didn’t have time to see Charlotte’s main attractions like the Nascar hall of fame, The National Whitewater center or the Mint Museum. We will have to come back one day!

Bonus Pic of The Day: We stopped at Mcdonalds to get ice cream. To our not-so-surprise, the size of the Ice Cream sundae is about 3 times as large as what you get here in California. Not really complaining…