I spent most of the week after the Hulaween music festival visiting Savannah and Charleston, which I really loved. When I planned this trip I wanted to squeeze one more city into it, and I decided on Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina, not knowing much else about that city. It's a huge city but didn't have the charm of those other two.

Friday, November 5, 2021

The first journey of the day was a bus ride from Charleston to Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. There would be a layover there after which I'd take another bus from Columbia to Charlotte. My stopover in Columbia was the first disappointment of the day.

Since I'm on a mission to take a picture of every state capitol building, I'd hoped to capture South Carolina's during this time. Unfortunately, Columbia's Greyhound bus station is in the most inconvenient location possible: nowhere near the city center, out on the outer fringe, without much public transit service. While riding the bus from Charleston, I checked how to get downtown with COMET, the local bus system. There's only one bus stop near the Greyhound station, and it's only serviced by one bus, which doesn't even run during the late morning and early afternoon, i.e. exactly when I needed it. So, no capitol capture for me. What to do for lunch then?

My only option for lunch was a Denny's at a nearby truck stop. It looked so close on the map, but it was about a ten-minute walk along the road. This road had no sidewalks, so I had to hike in the grass, while dragging my luggage behind me, and while cars occasionally zipped by at 50 mph. At the Denny's I had a pretty good salad, but it was still a huge chain restaurant so nothing too special.

After hiking back to the Greyhound station, I found the bus to Charlotte was delayed a half hour. Fortunately this gave me time to open my luggage and finally shake out my tent, shake out whatever particles were remaining from the Spirit of the Suwannee, and properly roll it up and stuff it into the bag it's usually stored in.

And unfortunately there's not much else I can say about Columbia. I'll have to go back and see it for real sometime, after all I still need a picture of that state capitol.

My next bus eventually showed up, which I then rode from Columbia to Charlotte. It arrived in Charlotte in the early evening, delayed not only by the 30-minute-late departure but also a traffic jam on the way, just before the sun started to set. Thankfully, Charlotte's Greyhound station is in the center of the city.

Charlotte skyline seen from the Greyhound parking lot. Here's an interesting quirk of this city: the city center is called "uptown," unlike every other American city where it's called "downtown."

So first, I had to check into my hotel. Charlotte isn't the wonderfully walkable city that Charleston and Savannah are, and I wasn't staying in an Airbnb but a Rodeway Inn. To get there I had to take bus 1 northwest on Rozzelles Ferry Road to its intersection with Interstate 85, where the Rodeway is. The bus fare was a bizarre $2.20, and they don't do day passes. I didn't have any dimes on me but fortunately this driver accepted just $2.

I checked into the hotel and left my luggage there. By now it was dark out and I wanted to find something for dinner, so I walked back to the bus stop to catch the bus bound for uptown. And then, this happened. I was sitting at the bus stop waiting for bus 1 to show up, and it did...and just drove on by, leaving me there! What the HELL?? Now I had to call another Lyft. Thankfully this one only cost $7 and change.

The first thing I noticed in uptown Charlotte that night was someone walking up and down the streets shouting "Jesus saves!" everywhere, while carrying a huge sign with the same words on it, occasionally singing lines from old hymns, horribly off key.

A plaque on the ground in uptown, with more Revolution history to take in. "On the morning of the 20th day of May, in the year 1775, the patriots of Mecklenburg County declared themselves free and independent of Great Britain by signing the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence which preceded the national Declaration by more than a year. The signing took place in a rustic backwoods courthouse which stood nearby in the center of the intersection of Trade and Tryon Streets. In 1819 the Congress of the United States declared that Mecklenburg County in North Carolina was the cradle of American liberty."

I did find a place to eat dinner uptown, an upscale-looking restaurant called Essex Bar & Bistro. For dinner I had a quinoa salad which included quinoa, green onions, almonds, and feta cheese. Naturally I had to have some local beer too: OMB Mecktoberfest, which tasted more like a Märzen than the one I had in Charleston the night before, Birdsong Rewind lager which was just OK, and finally a Devil's Logic Crushing Pils which I thought was good but not great.

Unlike when I tried to reach uptown from the hotel on the bus, taking the bus back to the hotel from the uptown transit hub was pretty easy.

Saturday, November 6, 2021

The first thing I have to do after waking up is find something for breakfast. On this Saturday morning, that was frustratingly difficult. Staying at a Rodeway Inn, there was nothing to eat there, so I walked across the bridge over I-85 and up Brookshire Boulevard in search of something to eat. This wasn't easy. There was a Burger King and a Jack in the Box open and serving breakfast, but only at the drive-up windows. Their dining rooms were closed. This meant that without a car I couldn't get anything there. All I could do was buy breakfast at a QT convenience store and take that back to the hotel.

OK, so between the bus not stopping for me and the fast food joints only operating drive-up windows, Charlotte wasn't impressing me much.

After eating my convenience store food, I checked out of the hotel, but since I still had several hours to spend in the city, the clerk let me store my baggage behind the lobby desk. I started walking from the hotel, with a backpack, on Rozzelles Ferry Road in the direction of uptown. After last night's experience, I didn't trust the bus stop nearest the hotel so I hiked further down the road.

During the walk I found a coffee shop that looked like it was worth a stop. The name of the place was Toucan Louie's. You know what, this place served some great coffee. I liked it enough that I bought a bag of coffee grounds to take home. Maybe it was a good thing that the bus ignored me the night before, because that's the only reason I thought to walk this far.

Further along the road I found another bus stop where other people were waiting for a bus. This time, the bus actually stopped and I got a ride uptown.

Charlotte may be an old city--it was founded in 1755 and was named after the wife of George III---but it definitely feels more like a much newer southern metropolis, like Dallas or Houston, not at all like other cities like Savannah and Charleston that were founded in colonial times. It seems that Charlotte was really a small town for much of its existence, and only really experienced population growth and achieved "big city" status in the 20th century. And so, it has a lot more car-centric development.

This is probably why I couldn't find a whole lot to do in uptown Charlotte on a Saturday morning. Uptown mostly consists of huge office towers, and being a Saturday morning, those buildings were mostly empty and there just weren't many people walking around. There was one small collection of shops and such underneath one of those buildings, but all those shops were closed.

I did find an interesting book-themed park, though.

Walking around other uptown streets I found some historical markers that stood out to me...

We saw Nathanael Greene's grave a few days earlier in Savannah.

Next I made my way toward the center of uptown because I could tell something big was about to happen. Up ahead I could see a street was blocked off, there was a little bit of a police presence, and people were gradually gathering. Also, I could hear some kind of indistinct shouting. What could be going on? Was there some kind of protest rally happening? When I finally made it to Tryon Street, which was blocked off to traffic, there was nothing happening there. The shouting I heard was merely the "Jesus saves!" guy again.

But still, there was clearly a major event about to happen so I asked someone standing nearby about it. The Veterans' Day parade was what everyone was waiting for. This parade would feature marching formations from area high schools' Junior ROTC programs. Veterans' Day is actually November 11, but since that was going to be on a Thursday, they were doing it now because it was a weekend. Well, that could be a worthwhile diversion, I thought, since I want to experience local things like that wherever I travel to. So I stayed there awhile and waited for the parade to start.

First the American Legion and some bikers led the way.

Northwest Cabarrus High School Air Force JROTC

Garinger High School Army JROTC

Marine Corps JROTC. I think this was the only Marine unit there.

There were a whole bunch more, of course. Eventually I got my fill of this parade and wandered off looking for something else to do. There was a science museum called Discovery Place that I wanted to check out, but I don't think it was open. That's when I decided I'd swim some laps at a nearby pool. After picking up an after-swim protein shake at a Harris-Teeter supermarket, I made my way to the Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center. Charlotte as a whole may not be the most walkable city, but it's pretty easy to get around uptown on foot.

After the swim it was about time to find something for lunch. There were plenty of upscale restaurants uptown, mostly on the first floors of the office skyscrapers. The first one I looked at was Tupelo Honey Southern Kitchen. Tasty-looking menu, but the wait time was prohibitively long, so I moved on. There was another one I considered whose name I can't remember, but which had a business-casual dress code which I certainly was not in compliance with. Finally I settled on McCormick & Schmick's Seafood & Steaks, on Tryon & 4th. It was expensive but I'd say worth it. I had a walnut greens salad with grilled chicken and grilled asparagus.

With lunch finished, I didn't have much time left before my next bus would leave, bound for Atlanta. This bus was not Greyhound but MegaBus, a company I'd never used before. The bus would be leaving from a parking lot near the Arrowood light rail station. So first, I had to take bus 1 back up to the Rodeway, pick up my luggage, take the same bus back to the uptown transit hub, and then take an elevator up to where the light rail station was.

Charlotte has a light rail system called CityLYNX which runs two lines, Blue and Gold. Arrowood, on the southern fringe of the city, was near the end of the Blue Line. The train showed up not long after I bought my ticket from a machine. This train was pretty new, and I thought it looked and felt rather similar to the U-Bahn light rail trains in Dortmund and Cologne.

Unlike in those two German cities, of course, this network with only two lines doesn't connect so many parts of the city. I can't judge the system too much, though, since I don't know enough about Charlotte and have only ever ridden the light rail there this one time. Maybe in the future they'll expand it.

Arrowood was a big parking lot lined by bus stop signs. They were all for Charlotte's public transit buses, except for one, which was a MegaBus stop. Apparently MegaBus doesn't do "stations" the way Greyhound does. They pick up and drop off passengers at stops like this one.

The bus itself was a big blue double-decker bus. The driver packed everyone's luggage in the compartment as everyone boarded. It was a pretty comfortable ride, and it was a non-stop four-hour ride from Charlotte to Atlanta. The only complaint I have about it has nothing to do with the bus, or the company, but merely my own mistakes. Before stepping on the bus, I'd assumed it would be more like a Greyhound ride with a few stops on the way. It never occurred to me to bring anything to eat or drink, which quickly became a problem because I soon felt hungry and thirsty, which only got worse over the course of this four-hour ride.

Trying to keep my mind off my parched throat and grumbling stomach, I pulled out a book to read, which I'd bought earlier that week in Savannah: David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life among the Pirates. I liked this book. It was a comprehensive and concise survey of the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean, roughly lasting from 1650 to 1725, comparing the reality of piracy to the popular perception we've gotten from books and movies like Treasure Island and Peter Pan. This book was published before the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out, though, so there's no mention of Jack Sparrow. From this book I learned a great deal, things which I don't think most people are aware of. For example, did you know that pirates, despite being little more than high-profile thieves and murderers, were incredibly democratic for their times, and even voted out their captains if they thought they weren't pulling in enough plunder? And that the captains actually abided by these decisions?

Finally, finally, finally! After four hours charging down Interstate 85, the MegaBus stopped in downtown Atlanta. Immediately I reclaimed my rollaround suitcase, and with my mouth feeling like a desert and my stomach growling so hard I wondered if it was consuming itself, I set off on a desperate quest for something to eat. Despite being downtown in one of America's biggest cities, this was ridiculously difficult.

Some years ago in San Antonio at one Meetup group or another I met someone who had moved there from Atlanta, and had said she didn't like Atlanta because of how downtown seems to empty out and shut down whenever the sun sets. That sounds pretty accurate. Downtown Atlanta on that Saturday evening was mostly deserted. It was built like uptown Charlotte, that is, it was mostly towering office buildings with some expensive hotels and upscale restaurants. All of those upscale restaurants were already closed when I found them, except one: White Oak Kitchen and Cocktails.

White Oak Kitchen and Cocktails, at the corner of Baker and Peachtree, served up some nice food, even if it was a little pricey. This was the kind of place that would serve you a small salad at a higher price than what you could get a much bigger salad for at a less-fashionable establishment. First I had something called a Gem Salad which was made with shrimp, radishes, and grapefruit, accompanied by a locally-brewed ale, Bold Monk Indominus Quadrupel, a strong 10.1% abv Belgian-style ale. This wasn't enough, because I was that hungry and the salad wasn't that big, so I had an Apple & Kale Salad made with beets and pecan-encrusted goat cheese. Through all this, of course, I drank multiple glasses of water. Finally I had to try a hot concoction I saw on the menu, Honeysuckle Tea, made with vodka, jade oolong tea, lemon, and simple syrup.

There, finally, I'd satisfied my hunger and thirst, and now only had one more thing to do, find my way to my hotel in College Park. To get there, I used Atlanta's subway. That's right, Atlanta has a subway system, something I only discovered that night. It's not nearly the kind of well-developed and built-out network one would expect in such a big city, though. It only consists of four lines: two running north-south side-by-side, mostly through the same stations except at the extreme ends of the lines, and the other two running east-west, also mostly through the same stations except at the ends. The four lines meet in the center in the confusingly-named Five Points station. I boarded one of the southbound trains at either the Civic Center or Peachtree Center station.

Something I noticed about Atlanta's subway is that the trains look similar to the subway trains run by the DC Metro. They're probably made by the same company.

MARTA subway train in Atlanta

DC Metro train I rode during my weekend there in August

College Park is near the south end of the Gold and Red lines. I spent about 20 minutes walking through this town from the subway station to the Clarion Hotel. This was the exact same hotel where I'd spent Wednesday night the week before. This trip was ending in the same places where it began.

Sunday, November 7, 2021

After breakfast at the Clarion, I was going to ride a bus to the subway station, but after checking the schedule for the next bus arrival, while knowing from last night that the station was a 20-minute walk away, I realized I could actually get to the station faster by walking, so that's what I did. The subway ride itself was quite short, because the airport's subway station was only the next stop south from College Park.

So that's one good thing about Atlanta, the fact that their massive international airport is actually connected to the subway system. There are certain other massive international airports in this country, like Washington Dulles, that still aren't so connected.

I had one flight to take that day, Atlanta to Albuquerque. I'd been through more layovers than I can count at the Atlanta airport over the last decade. My arrival there a week and a half earlier had been the first time I had ever walked out of that airport rather than flown, and now this was the first time I would be starting a trip there, the first time I would go through their security line. And that line sure was long...

Good thing I got there two hours early.

Sunday was a long day. Really, for me that Sunday was 27 hours long, because not only did I gain two hours because of crossing time zones, but also November 7 was "fall back" day, when Daylight Saving Time ended, gifting me another extra hour.

Well, that was certainly an epic journey. First there was that unforgettable music festival, Suwannee Hulaween, then a short visit to Savannah, followed by a longer stay in Charleston, and then this quick look at Charlotte and Atlanta which I didn't like as much. Visiting those cities all in one week really emphasized people-centric cities, like Savannah and Charleston, and car-centric cities, like Charlotte and Atlanta. By now you can probably tell I prefer the former, to visit and to live in. Next time I go to Hulaween and take a week vacation afterward, I'll certainly go back to Savannah and Charleston, and if I don't fill the whole week with those, possibly spend a day in Augusta, Georgia which is of a similar vintage as Savannah.

A week later--November 13--at the Bandolero Brewery in Clovis, New Mexico.