A Weekend in Charlotte

I've always wanted to live in Charlotte. My mom is from Charlotte and I always felt a sense of peace and "home" when I was here growing up. Lucky for me, this became a reality in 2013 after college but it still took a little time before it felt like home once I was here.

Three years later, we've really settled in and there's so much to do that we're constantly finding new things. But, I want to share some of my favorites if you've only got a weekend in town. My friend, Katherine, and her boyfriend came to visit in May and we tried to fit so much in because I'm not so secretly trying to get her to move here. 

So here's an itinerary for our long weekend in Charlotte!

Friday // Concert night. 

Charlotte has a ton of concert venues - the largest (and the one we went to) being PNC Music Pavilon where a lot of big names come during the summer. This particular Friday happened to be Kenny Chesney and also the main reason they chose this weekend to come. We've planned to see Kenny together for years but finally made it happen! 

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It was raining, so the tailgating was in my trunk ;)

Saturday // Brunch, breweries and queso. 

After a night of singing our hearts out, we slept in and headed to Tupelo Honey Cafe for brunch. Shockingly, this was my first time there because it's always so busy but we thought ahead to make reservations this time.

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After brunch, we took them brewery hopping. Charlotte has SO many breweries (here's an article on them). For this trip, we went to Olde Mecklenburg Brewery which is a German brewery that has won awards for their beer and they also have pretzels and beer cheese :) After OMB, we headed to Birdsong Brewing - Jalepeno Ale for the win - and NoDa brewing. 

Via

For dinner we hit up our favorite Mexican restaurant which happens to be a hole in the wall type place and they give you SO much queso. There are also some other great Mexican places like Bakersfield and Sabor! 

These are from Sabor!

Sunday // US National Whitewater Center. 

This is place is SO cool. It's actually the national training center for the Olympics' whitewater events, but it's open to the public and there's so many activities to take part in. Whitewater rafting, stand up paddle board, kayaking, zip lines, ropes courses, mountain biking, and rock climbing to name just a handful. We have season passes and they were worth every single penny. 

There's also a food truck, snack bar and restaurant on site with plenty of bars and local beer all around! On Thursday's and Saturdays during the summer, they have live music and offer yoga classes throughout the week. 

At a Thursday night concert. 

At the Labor Day festival.

Basically, there's something for everyone. One of my favorite activities there is sitting on the grass beside the whitewater river, drinking a beer and watching people wipe out on the river ;) 

So there you have it: a weekend in Charlotte. There are SO many cool things to do that you could come plenty of times and never go to the same place! But these are some of my highlights and favorite things to do around town.