Category: Charlotte

On the previous day, I had visited Raleigh Beer Garden and I was, it’s fair to say, a little surprised and delighted at the range of beers available. I was impressed that I had visited what was once the bar with the highest number of draft beers available in the world, but thought little more of who the new world record holder was.

This is the answer, their sister venue, the Charlotte Beer Garden. They had a quite ridiculous 450 different beers available on draft, of which there were a substantial number that were notable enough for me to want to try. If I’m being honest, there were over 50 I really wanted to try. Unfortunately, I thought five was the maximum that I could reasonably try and just had to limit myself to those. My maturity knows no bounds sometimes.

The beer list was on Untappd and the service was entirely on point, personable, engaging and suitably welcoming. This is a venue which is being run to world class standards as far as I’m concerned, they’re clearly passionate about beer and service. It was clean as well, although I visited just after lunchtime when it was still quiet.

This is the Push It Real Good sour from Newgrass Brewing Co of Shelby, North Carolina. The flavour is of cherry limeade and I rate this as perhaps the best sour that I’ve had, riven with flavour, a rich mouthfeel, creamy and thick, completely delicious. I’d suggest that it’s hard to make sours much better than this, a true delight and a beer that I had to rate 5/5 on Untappd. Even my friend Nathan would have rated this 5…..

And then this, the Super Duper Nice from Tripping Animals Brewing Co of Doral in Florida, another beautiful sour with strong flavours of peach, orange and strawberry.

The decorative tree in the centre of the bar. The venue is similar in operation to Raleigh Beer Garden, namely one spirits bar, one bar with local beers and another bar with more national beer options. I’d suggest that it must be very hard to ever complete this venue, their selection changes so regularly and there is so much choice that I can imagine how surprised and delighted I’d be on a regular basis if I lived nearer. There were also plenty of power points dotted around the place, including at the bar, as well as wi-fi available throughout.

As may be evident by my enthusiasm, I liked this venue. I had decided to pop to Blaze Pizza so didn’t get food here, but they serve throughout the day although they have picked up a few negative reviews about the quality. As the venue’s name suggests, there’s an extensive outside area in addition to the cavernous interior so there’s plenty of space. This bar should have felt formulaic given the theme that they’ve gone for, and it would be easy to fail to reach the high expectations which I feel they’ve set themselves up with. But, they didn’t fail me and it felt an authentic and genuine place. This is a bar for the many and not the few…..

I’m not sure if I’ll be back in Charlotte any time soon, but if I am, this will be one of the first destinations to visit. Their exterior hides a heap of delights which are available behind these doors.

I was staying at this hotel in Charlotte for two nights and the whole experience was just a little odd. Strange in terms of my views differ to the majority as I thought that everything was fine and bear in mind that it’s fair to say that I can usually find something to grumble about. However, the bulk of the reviews are terrible and it appears that they have a roaches problem.

The room that I was given had been recently modernised and was clean, well presented and entirely free of insects of all kinds. I do tear beds apart in a room to check for bedbugs, but I’ve remained fortunate in not having found them for many years. Actually, I can’t recall ever finding them, but my memory isn’t what it was.

There was a major road intersection nearby, but I didn’t have any issues with noise and I was pleased with just how cheap the hotel was. I suspect it was cheap because they were having problems filling it because of the reviews, although there seems an over supply of accommodation in parts of Charlotte. There was a problem with the hotel processing my card as I have a Chase one without a number on, which confused a number of locations, but the manager seemed happy to tap away on his computer to make things work. I thought the welcome was authentic and genuine, I had the impression that they were trying their best.

There was a basic breakfast included, which was mediocre but acceptable. There were cereals, but no milk, but there were at least pastries and so I was happy. There were also yoghurts, juices and coffee and I have low expectations of most hotels in the United States in terms of their breakfasts. I’m all for European breakfasts with cold meats, cheeses and breads, which isn’t something I’m going to get at a cheaper hotel in the United States.

It was clean and tidy in the breakfast room, I didn’t think that there was a great deal wrong here. Well, other than they needed milk.

I took this photo to remind me that there was daily housekeeping at this hotel, which fortunately seems to now be the standard again around the world. Actually, other than Travelodge in the UK, but I never stay for more than one night there, so that’s not a problem.

The breakfast on my second morning was distinctly similar to that of the first morning. I can be quite conservative (small c) at times.

For those with excellent eyesight (or patience) who enlarge the photo, there was a view of a McDonald’s. More worryingly for me when looking out of the window, the weather was far from ideal and that meant my trip into Charlotte was going to be moist.

As for the hotel, my comments are positive as I think I must have been given a renovated room that they were content was free of infestation, whether by luck or design. The hotel does itself no favours though in the poor way it responds to reviews, with generic apologies and no details of what they’re doing to resolve issues. Quite why they’ve spent so much money on a refurbishment, which appears to be ongoing, without tackling the other problems seems a little bizarre to me as their room rates will remain low.

For anyone who reads this, I’d recommend it based on my experience, but I’d ask to see the room before completing payment. I do this very rarely, but if I’m highly sceptical about a hotel I have been known to insist on this and few locations are reluctant to assist with such a query. If I had realised that the hotel was getting so many complaints, I might have sat near reception for longer as I like listening in to conversations such as “I’ve slept with roaches” which would have provided some interesting background noise for me.

I’ve already posted about my experiences at the Baymont, a hotel I left during heavy rain feeling content about my stay, unlike apparently everyone else.

I had tried to minimise what I carried during my time traipsing around the United States for a month, but I did have a waterproof coat and a bag cover, so I was as prepared for rain as I possibly could be. Here’s my bag, ready for whatever weather was thrown at it.

Although I had no complaints about the hotel, I did have a complaint about the road system in Charlotte. Or, at least, the crossing the road system in Charlotte. My planned route into Charlotte had to be abandoned as I couldn’t cross the road. This isn’t ideal, but there were no pedestrian crossings and I wasn’t going to run across a road with such poor visibility in the rain.

Instead, I decided to replicate the journey that I had made the previous day and was fortunate to catch the bus just as I arrived at the stop. It was clear that the day was going to be a good one.

To my great annoyance, I was busy messaging on my phone (I’ve looked back and discovered the culprit was Nathan, although it seems hard to blame him for my not paying attention) and missed the bloody tram stop and so had to traipse about 200 metres back down the road. However, I remained positive despite missing the tram by thirty seconds and then having to wait twenty minutes as the next tram was delayed.

Slightly soggy, but safely on the tram and heading towards the centre of Charlotte. I decided at this point that I wouldn’t spent the morning exploring Charlotte as I had intended, the rain was torrential and I thought it would be sensible to get to the airport. This was the tailend of Hurricane Ian and although it was nowhere near as bad as it had been in Florida and South Carolina, there didn’t seem any point in staying out in the rain and wind.

There are moments when travelling can be frustrating. I urge anyone reading (both of you) to zoom in on this photo of the bus station. I needed to get a bus to the airport from Bay V. Yes, the one stop not listed anywhere.

I went and asked a bus driver and he politely told me that the stop I wanted was outside. Outside in the rain. Great.

I don’t want to go on about it, but can anyone spot Bay V here?

I stood at the outside bus bay trying to avoid the hurricane and whilst waiting I purchased my ticket using the bus company’s app. I was highly annoyed to discover that I had likely bought the wrong ticket, as there’s a small extra charge for airport routes and I hadn’t realised that before committing to my purchase. I decided to act stupid and show my incorrect ticket to the driver and hope that he thought British visitors were likely thick. But, being British, I worried about my possibly incorrect ticket for ten minutes whilst waiting for the bus to arrive.

The driver didn’t bother with tickets, he said loudly “it’s too wet to check” so I got away with probably having the wrong ticket. I was delighted to get going on my journey to the airport and then five seconds later the bus broke down. The driver told everyone to get off and we all traipsed down the bus to disembark, whilst one woman pushed her way through the emergency exit. At that point a mechanic got on and fixed the bus within fifteen seconds, commenting slightly negatively to the bus driver about his incompetence. I was highly amused at the woman who had pushed her way out now looking quite angry at why no-one else had also disembarked, but that’s just my sense of order kicking in.

I had expected the route to be busy with people going to the airport. It transpired that I was the only person. I mention this as it really isn’t ideal to be sitting on a bus where it’s difficult to see out because of a hurricane and wondering why no-one on the airport bus is going to the airport. But I’m a fearless traveller (terms and conditions apply….) and so I bravely sat there getting slightly stressed. I never said travel was easy. But, I digress, I was safely at the airport which was being hit by a hurricane, so all seemed well with the world.

I had arrived at the airport not entirely sure what to do about the tailend of Hurricane Ian that had reached North Carolina. I thought it made sense to get there to see what would unfold, but part of me expected to be back in Charlotte that evening rather than my hoped for destination of Chicago. Not ideally, but I couldn’t even find the security gates at Charlotte Airport, the first time that’s ever happened, but that was due to large-scale refurbishment work and there were helpful staff available to point me in the appropriate direction.

The next thing that seemed unusual as someone from the UK is the number of posters warning travellers to have a think about whether they had a gun in their hand baggage. There weren’t just one or two posters, but tens of them, so I assume a lot of Americans merrily go through security forgetting they’ve got a gun or two at the bottom of their bag. It’s not for me to comment about the laws in other countries, but it does strike me as odd that this situation still exists, but best I don’t get onto the subject of gun laws.

I was pleased at this, namely, there were very few flights being cancelled.

Jumping ahead, this was the situation a few hours later, so I had been lulled into a false sense of security…. Fortunately mine was the 16:25 flight that was still taking off.

This was the clearest photo that I could get of the airport apron.

Unsure of what to expect, and at the airport five hours before the flight, I thought I’d just sit in the American Airlines lounge and see what there was to eat and drink. I’m good like that in a crisis…..