Monday, March 28, 2011

What I Like About Charlotte

Many of you know that Rob spent the last couple months living in Charlotte, NC. Rob is from a small coastal (Navy base) town in NC. His brother (and family, including our only niece) and father live in Charlotte now and we travel down there a least once a year to see them. We were contemplating a move to Charlotte so we scheduled a two week trip for the kids and I to check out the city. Typically, our visits are full of the cousins playing together and we don't venture out much. I am pretty happy with our little community here in the Midwest so it was a hard sell to get me to even think about a move.  I have to admit, after two weeks I did find some things to like about Charlotte.

This time we stayed at Rob's father's condo in the Myers Park area of Charlotte. I like this area more than where Marc (Rob's brother) and Stephanie (his wife) live just because I found it easy to walk to a grocery store (Harris Teeter Express) with a small selection of organic produce and some vegan specialty items, restaurants (finally found a Thai restaurant I like in Charlotte, Deejai Thai, and they also offer brown rice), parks, and even an adorable little library. We preferred Healthy Home Market to Harris Teeter, but it was nice to be able to run across the street for a few groceries. If we were going to move to the area, I think we would look in the Southend area or Sedgefield.

 Edgehill Park was one of the neighborhood parks within walking distance of my father-in-law's.
This is what the walk to Edgehill Park looks like.
I like the trees in-between the lanes and you can usually find cyclists along this stretch during the day.
The kids had a great time in the spring (felt like summer to us) weather.
Dema (soon to be seven), Parker (11), and Josie (showing you that she is 3 "a magic number").
Dema had a great time going back and forth on the jungle gym. Believe it or not, he lost his second tooth on this trip. He lost his first on our Charlotte trip back in December.
Josie enjoying the warm sun.

Again, we chowed down at The Common Market. We went to both locations. Breakfast wraps at the South End location. This one had tofu scramble with walnuts, spinach, and vegan sausage all wrapped up in green for St. Patrick's Day. Mmm, mmm, good!
Tofu Benedict at Plaza Midwood, oh my goodness was this yummy! I can't wait to go back just to eat breakfast at the The Common Market. Our wonderful community has many things, but vegan breakfast is not one of them.
We used to frequent the Mellow Mushroom for their Mega Veggie pizza back in our pre-kid days when we commuted to Atlanta from DC and post-kid days in Asheville, NC on the way to Charlotte. Mellow Mushroom has brought it up a notch by offering Daiya vegan cheese, booyah!
We took advantage to Mellow Mushroom being just down the street from my father-in-laws and ate there a few times during our two week visit.
The kids thought it was all kinds of fun to be able to order a pizza with vegan cheese and tofu.

Freedom Park wasn't quite within easy walking distance, but was worth the short drive.
About seven acres of nature, playgrounds, walking paths, etc. it is Charlotte's "central park".
While walking through Freedom Park, Rob confessed that he is really a Midwesterner at heart, southern roots or no.

Thankfully, Rob was offered a job working from home so we don't have to move right now, but it is nice to have some new places to go when we are in NC for visits. I was won over a bit and can see why people move to the Charlotte metro area, but we were all very happy to be back at our home sweet home.

2 comments:

Debra said...

Great pictures.. yummy looking food!
Blessings, Debra
Raw Vegan Diet

VeganLinda said...

Thanks, Debra, my youngest was very impressed with the Hello Kitty on your blog. :-)