The Queen City: Revisited

I am absolutely itching to travel. It never really goes away, this itch. Fortunately, I was able to relieve it somewhat with a little weekend road trip. Boyfriend and I headed south for a wedding in our old stomping grounds, Charlotte, North Carolina.

The best and worst thing about driving to Charlotte from anywhere west of Charlotte is the time it takes to get there. Driving through the Appalachians is breathtakingly beautiful and arduously slow. Heading out from southern Indiana took us through Brown County, Indiana (beautiful rolling hills, picture-perfect farms, a postcard of Midwestern charm) Kentucky (the beginnings of mountains, Bourbon country, more beautiful rolling hills) , a corner of Tennessee (Branson East, river camping and rafting, even more beautiful rolling hills, seriously cute little towns tucked into the mountains), and a chunk of very western North Carolina (narrow highway twisting and climbing around green mountains).  For most of our drive it rained. Spring, amiright?

After our beautiful but pokey drive, we made it to Charlotte, checked into our hotel, and promptly thanked Priceline for providing us with a beautiful view of the city. Then it was off to meet Charlottians past and present. We were walking distance to all of our downtown destinations for the weekend (Seriously, Priceline was killing it.) The wedding we'd come to town for was beautiful despite a cozy (although I'm sure unwelcome) grumble of thunder and afternoon rain shower. We ducked from awning to awning on our way to the reception in a restaurant above the city, Bentley's on 27. Cocktails should always be accompanied by panoramic views. This is my new rule. Walking just a few blocks back to our hotel was a great way to end the evening. We did venture out of downtown for two very good reasons during our stay though. Cabo Fish Taco and Zada Jane's. 

Cabo Fish Taco and the wonderful weather are the top two things I miss about living in North Carolina. I can't control the weather, but I can control where I eat lunch. Barbecue Mahi Tacos. This midwestern girl cannot think of any lunch not improved by the addition of barbecue sauce. These tacos are one of my favorite meals and it was so nice to enjoy them with some of our buddies from our Charlotte days. They also made sure we made it to a restaurant we'd never been to when we lived in town. We were missing out, you guys. Zada Jane's was our last Charlotte meal of the weekend and it was a wonderful choice. Awesome giant breakfast on the patio for the win. It will be added to the "When in Charlotte" list for next time.  

While I'm still itching for more travel, I loved being in Charlotte for the weekend. It may never be our forever home, but it'll always be fun to go back and remember our couple of years there.

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail

This is one of a series of posts that mysteriously reverted to draft form. They were actually posted quite a while ago but they're here for now. Sorry about the craziness!


A few weekends ago (sorry for the radio silence, by the way. Life, etc.) we got to go on another little beat-the-winter-blues getaway. Boyfriend's birthday was a couple days ago and as my gift to him I arranged a quick trip to bourbon country. For those without booze nerds in their lives, the Bourbon Trail is a small area of Kentucky where half a dozen or so distilleries are located, included some major national brands like Four Roses, Wild Turkey and Jim Beam. We live just a couple hours away so we headed down to Kentucky on Saturday morning. We would be staying in Frankfurt but there are distilleries in several smaller towns close by.

First up was Four Roses in Lawrenceburg, a unique distillery because of it's Spanish architectural style. The tours for most of these places are free so you need to do nothing more than materialize at the top of the hour. The Four Roses tour starts with a short movie and a little history of the grounds. The coolest part of their tour, though, is being able to walk through the actual processing areas. They don't kid around. There are pans of boiling water to watch out for and massive vats of yeasty mixes. The highlight of these tours for bourbon fans of course, is the tasting and at Four Roses you get to taste three different bourbons. I am not a big bourbon fan but even so it is interesting to try different types back to back.

After Four Roses we checked into our hotel and recharged for the evening. I love trips like this because we had a couple things scheduled but no particular plans in between. We consulted UrbanSpoon to get an idea for dinner options and decided to head to a little place in downtown Frankfurt. Pretty good food, really attentive service- as it was St.Patrick's Day weekend the chef brought out a little of his corned beef for us to try. We also got free birthday dessert and we didn't have to listen to anyone sing! Score! After dinner we had a reservation for the ghost tour at Buffalo Trace.

Arriving at Buffalo Trace, we were both taken by the size of the operation. That place is huge! There are not only processing buildings and a visitor's center but a historic home and a large cabin-style banquet facility that was hosting a wedding when we there. As for the tour, we assumed it would be a mix of campfire style stories about the spooky history of the distillery and bourbon info. We were unaware that a lot of the tour rehashes the episode of Ghost Hunters at the distillery. Even better, some of our fellow tour-goers fancied themselves amateur ghost hunters complete with an app to detect...whatever you try to detect when you think your phone can help you hunt ghosts. So, that was...that. The coolest building in my opinion was the storage facility. Rows upon rows, floors upon floors are filled with barrels of aging bourbon. It was a great little weekend away that ended with my acquiring the stomach flu. Awesome.

Back to normal life now. My birthday is next week! Hooray cake!