Miles: 1,030
Route: Nashville, TN - Charlotte, NC - Madison, NJ
We arrived in Charlotte after dark on Monday night and had just enough time for a nice dinner and quick driving tour of the city with our hosts, Steve and Jenny.
Having never spent much time in Charlotte, other than a couple of brief work stopovers at the airport, we both enjoyed checking out the downtown area (which looked pretty nice, even at night). Steve gave us the hard sell on a city where A. we could both reasonably obtain finance jobs, B. the weather was nicer, and C. we might actually be able to afford buying a house in the next 10 years (unlike Manhattan!). We don't know where we'll end up after our adventure, but it's possible we've added Charlotte into the consideration pile!
Alex woke up Tuesday morning with a bad cold so I went for a solo run and got to check out a bit of the residential area near Myers Park. The neighborhood is very picturesque, with huge canopy-like trees, tons of green space and many older, beautiful homes. There is actually a widely known path through the area that locals have taken to calling the "Booty Loop" due to the number of young women who jog along the streets.
Paused to snap a picture of Freedom Park on my morning run.
Queens Road was covered in a canopy of big, old trees.
After my run Alex and I got cleaned up and started the drive north to Washington, DC. We stopped in South Hill, VA for a quick lunch and realized we have done a great job of avoiding fast food in the US (which is good not only for health-related concerns, but also because I prefer Wendy's and Alex has die-hard loyalty to McDonald's).
"Southern" Greek salad with fried green tomatoes. Doesn't this look better than a greasy fast-food meal?
After lunch I took over driving because Alex 's cold had resulted in violent coughing fits every few minutes. We hoped he would start to feel better after a few hours but instead his conditioned worsened and - no surprise since we were sharing a small space together - I started to feel sick too. As we headed into Washington, DC we made the sad decision to bypass our two days there and head directly home to Madison, NJ for some rest. We had been looking forward to spending some quality time with our hosts there, Bill and Emily, and checking out Alex's favorite college stomping grounds but knew that we needed to get healthy before embarking on our 8 month journey, which begins next week already!
We just got to Madison and will spend the next few days resting and sleeping so we can gear up for one last weekend (and wedding!) in New York before getting organized and prepared to spend 8 months outside of the US. Fingers crossed we can kick these colds before then!