The Vacation, Part II

Tuesday: chilled in the morning. That was always a highlight – spending a couple hours each morning doing absolutely nothing at the timeshare. Glorious. We then hopped on the car and drive three hours to Shelby, NC. We thought we’d go see a movie, but the movie theater was closed. At 4 p.m. in the afternoon. Closed. We had a quick lunch at Chik-Fil-A (yay!) and then opted to go bowling. We played three games (we were killing time). I managed to score a 97 on the second game, which is the best score I’ve had in a few years. After the third game we called B to see if we could come over early, and she said yes. So with that we drove back to Boiling Springs to spend the evening with N&B, some really good friends from college. They have two great kids (K, who’s 9 and T, who’s 6). It was a fun night just talking, catching up and eating some pizza. They all had to get up early the next day for school trips, so Denis and I hopped back in the van and drove back to the timeshare.

Wednesday: We made the three hour drive back to Charlotte to have lunch with CN, another good friend of mine from college. CN was a good looking guy, and while he’s 15 years older he’s still good-looking. He was a redhead in college but his hair has darkened since college, and his face is a bit more angular. He actually reminded me a lot of the actor Christian “Batman Begins” Bale. He took us to a fun burger joint called The Penguin. After lunch we drove to Asheville to spend a few hours walking around the downtown area. We visited an awesome gallery (Woolworth Walk) and ended up buying three small pieces done by local artists. We then headed over to a seafood restaurant for dinner. I had a delicious lobster dish that I wolfed down. We then drove back to the timeshare. Now, so far during the vacation Denis hadn’t been sleeping most nights – he was only getting a couple of hours sleep each night. But this night I demanded he take a Tylenol PM. He did, and within an hour after arriving at the timeshare he was passed out, and didn’t wake up til morning.

Thursday: We checked out from the timeshare a day early because our friend Kirby agreed to let us crash at his place that night. Checking out involved dropping off the keys. That’s it. Easiest checkout ever. Then we headed to Biltmore Estate, the historic home of the Vanderbilts. I was totally enthralled during the 2-hour audio tour we took. The house was decorated for Christmas so each room had a Christmas tree and decorations. FUN FUN FUN. We didn’t visit any of the other things on the property (wine tasting and gardens). The house was the main thing I wanted to see. We then had a late lunch at a place called Flat Rock Grille. After lunch we drove a couple miles and popped into a movie theater (finally!). We saw “The Legend of Zorro” – it was the only one we could agree on. Surprisingly, it was thoroughly enjoyable in that it required no thinking and was just pure fun. I managed to eat nearly an entire bag of popcorn. Ugh. Then we drove the hour to Kirby’s. And then went to dinner. I know – a lot of food on this day, right? Trust me, I know. When we got back to Kirby’s house, Anthony was finally home from work so we spent a couple hours just hanging out and talking. At around 11 p.m. I got really tired, so Denis and I went up and passed out.

Friday: We woke up early and packed up our stuff and hit the road after saying goodbye to Kirby and Anthony at around 8:00 a.m. We took the long way to NoVA, thinking we’d check out Winchester, VA, but by the time we approached NoVA I just wanted to GET THERE, so we skipped Winchester. We arrived back at my parents in the afternoon and after a couple hours I could feel myself getting into a really bad mood so I went upstairs and took a two hour nap. Woke up feeling quite refreshed. After dinner we watched a movie (“Hitchhiker’s Guide”) and then I went to bed. Our vacation was winding down, but we still had my bridesmaid dress fitting and Jen’s shower to go…

More later….