A Seedy Hotel, A Drive, and a Bit of Panic

After our time in Historic Charleston we drove to Charlotte and checked in to our hotel there.  We were not impressed.  It was an "airport hotel" -- two blocks or so from the airport with big airplanes flying low and loud overhead!  The bathroom had peeling paint and the tub didn't look like it had been scrubbed by anyone as conscientious as my Kayli (or as germaphobic!).  The bedspread of the non-smoking room had a cigarette burn, and the room smelled like cleaner.  Perhaps we should have taken my cousin Julie up on her offer to go to her house.  Jeff (Julie's husband) said that our hotel had frequent visits from the police.  Thankfully they didn't come while we were there, and I only heard two women fighting once :-)

It didn't look so bad!
photo by google images.  We didn't actually take a picture.

We didn't know what to do in Charlotte and so we drove around downtown for about an hour to find something to eat and then ended up eating at the Cracker Barrel that was close to the hotel.  We were all really tired and so we stayed at our not so awesome hotel and slept.  At least the planes mostly stopped taking off and landing during the night!  I wish we had enough energy to have gone to Julie's but we were pretty tired.

In the morning we had breakfast and were packing up to go to Julie's house in Mooresville (only 45 minutes away -- I should have figured that out before booking a hotel at all!).  All of a sudden Derek was feeling panicked.  He couldn't find his wedding ring or his wallet.  Kayli called the Cracker Barrel and got an unhelpful worker.  It would have been faster to drive over and look ourselves!  After that I searched the car while Derek and Kayli moved things around in the great ring / wallet hunt.  Kayli found the ring while I searched the car and then Derek tried searching the car too.  

Finally, when Derek came back and was starting in on the room again he turned around, and Kayli asked what was in his back pocket.   It was in the shape of a rectangle, and it was his wallet.  He doesn't remember putting it there, and was a bit embarrassed I think, but we were all just glad it was found and we could get on the road.  I do stuff like that a LOT more often than he does and he is good not to make fun of me!

Besides the airport, which was a perfectly normal American Airport, we weren't super impressed with Charlotte, but perhaps we just didn't look in the right locations, or have the right experiences.  The Cracker Barrel was nice so that is something good!