Was That Really Intermediate Level? - Charlotte, NC

I have a handful of bruises to show for last weekend's adventure. Under no circumstances will I take pictures of them, though I strangely always want to take pictures of bruises and tan lines.

Charlotte is quite nice. Someone made a good point that since the U.S. is only a couple hundred years old, there's only so much culture that has developed in each city, especially compared to places like Berlin or Beijing.

However, I can be easily entertained, so several good meals and a few points of interest make for a solid weekend excursion, which is exactly what happened.

The Great Outdoors Created by People
Unanimous opinion across travelers' guides agree that one certain wilderness park is the best location for fun in Charlotte. Essentially, the park built a man-made whitewater course and strung a series of "ropes" courses high up in the trees within this medium-sized outdoors area. My travel companion and I spent most of Saturday running around inside it, and while I'm still a little confused why this national park, which shouts "mountains" to me, was built in the middle of North Carolina, which shouts "beach", I fully concur with the experts on the quality of entertainment. It was super fun.

We did rafting and a lot of ropes courses, the latter of which constitutes of myself in a harness connected to a steel guide wire above me. I inch across taut wires, ropes or wooden plats hung at foot level between trees and poles, and the goal is to get from tree to tree through segments of varying balance-difficulty. I'm pretty sure all of my bruises were from this one course where wooden beams hung vertically from a wire above. The 2-by-2's are installed with grips you see on rock walls, so like a precarious monkey, you climb from beam to beam going sideways until you reach the tree at the end. That was Intermediate difficulty. Like, what.

But also, we ziplined, and I think that was a fair reward.

U.S. National Whitewater Center

Food, Food, Food

      

     

Smelly Cat Coffee Shop; BBQ and fried corn; Cookie Butter Latte; The Crispy Crepe brunch

Chilling on Sunday
We looked on Groupon for activities, of which they had plenty... on every day but Sunday. Since most things were closed, we wandered around different neighborhoods, stopping by a Latin American street festival uptown for example.

Despite the fact that Charlotte felt a little small, I was impressed by the remarkable variety of unique skyscraper designs within the central district, which added a certain quirk and interest to the city. This is synecdochic of my takeaway impression generally: that Charlotte seems to be a scaled-down city done well.

    

Uptown; Transit system