That Nola Clap: Day 6

March 2010.

I had an early flight and GW's left soon after, so we both departed our hotel for New Orleans' Moisant Airport around 10a.m..

I had some delicious Sonic for breakfast before agreeing with GW that it was a good trip and then parting ways.

While normally these actions wouldn't warrant a BRN post, this time it does because I had a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Since I had never been to North Carolina before, I was determined to do my most with my 4 hour layover. I rushed off the airplane and quickly out of the Charlotte Airport. I hoped into the first cab I found & told him to bring me downtown.

15 minutes later, I was downtown and gawking at the Charlotte before me.

My sole reason for exploring Charlotte was because I had never been to North Carolina - I had to actually do something while in North Carolina; I personally wouldn't count it as doing something in North Carolina, if I simply stayed in the airport and explored the pilot bar.

I say that striking North Carolina from the list was my only reason for visiting because I wasn't particularly excited for Charlotte. I thought of Charlotte as a modern city akin to Toronto - fine for some people, but not anything that floats my boat.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, Charlotte was modern, but for some reason I didn't mind it. It had enough old buildings to prevent an appearance by my anger, it was clean & I never felt threatened (even on this Sunday where there weren't very many people around).

I'm not saying that Charlotte is now in my top 10, I'm only saying that I was pleasantly surprised.

Then again, maybe it had to do with just being in a new American city and exploring.

(By the way: The tall building in the background is the Bank of America Centre. The 90th tallest building in the world & 26th tallest in America.)

It wasn't all roses and rainbows though; it started to rain & I had to take to exploring indoors as I couldn't find anywhere to buy an umbrella.

The indoor places were all nice & fine, but they were also boring and modern, so lets move along.

Eventually the weather would turn to drizzle & I could simply tough it out.

Creative skatestoppers...

Walked over to the Carolina Panthers Football Stadium...

Just like Detroit, they have the cats out front.

Rawr rawr!

A pleasant addition to my walk around was the information stands which informed you of nearby historical attractions.

Although I did find it funny that they listed so many demolished sites...

Throughout the city were these pink trees that were of an artsy photographer's wet dream.

The Crape Myrtles did add plenty of colour and vibrancy to the city though; no matter how much I want to make fun of them...

My feet hurt enough from walking around New Orleans that I was limping a bit as I muscled around Charlotte. It didn't overly bother me, they could rest when I was back in the snowland.

Eventually they would bother me enough that I was thinking about going back to the airport. In addition to my sore feet, I also noticed a mean thundercloud coming & my trip was concluded near the National Nascar Museum.

Adios Charlotte!

(Charlotte would probably rank somewhere in the 30-40 range on my top cities list, but it would definitely rank higher if I was making recommendations for others. It wasn't really my style of city, but I would recommend it if someone was asking for a nice city to take their girl for the weekend.)

Back at the airport I wanted one of the comfy rocking chairs...

...but I had to settle for a Carolina Dog.

A Carolina Dog is a Coney with the addition of coleslaw (that is chili, onions, mustard & coleslaw)!

Even though I think coleslaw is a waste of time, this Carolina Dog was not. Coleslaw added some weird, interesting twist to the typical Coney & it was very tasty.

9 stars out of 10.

It was also funny because a man rushed up to me as I was eating my hot dog and blurted, "hey! where'd ya get that dog???" ...and after I directed him to the Nathan's Famous, he scurried off, trying to thank me in the mere seconds he had left in my presence.

It was priceless.

From there, it was a flight to Toronto & a flight home.

End.

Sources:

1 - Wikipedia - Hot Dog Variations

Go Back to the Main Page of this Website.