A couple of weekends ago, Lee and I took a trip to Raleigh, North Carolina. I have never been to either of the Carolinas so I was very excited to go! The trip was two-fold: one of his closest friends was getting married and it just so happened to line up with Valentine's Day. It was the first time Lee and I have been on a trip, just the two of us, since Avery was born. It was so hard for us to leave her, but so needed!
*Side note: Lee and I are such church kids that while we were driving we saw a sign that said Durham, North Carolina. We both quoted John P. Kee's famous line at the same time, hence the title of this blog.*
We left EARLYYYY Friday morning. Like 5am early. We landed around 9:30am, and quickly decided we were hungry. I mapped nearby places to eat, and this restaurant called Dame's Chicken and Waffles came up. (Click their name to go to their website!) Ya'll, if you're ever in that area make sure you stop by there! It was so good! Neither of us have ever had chicken and waffles, but soon realized what the hype was all about. The chicken was seasoned well, kind of spicy. The waffle was light and fluffy. Instead of just plain butter, they had "shmear" which is flavored whipped butter. Lee and I both had the maple-pecan, and I also tried the strawberry-creme. And the collard greens?! Reminded me of my mama's! Definitely fresh and home-cooked!
Oh, and ya'll see Lee's face? He was tired of me taking pictures already and it was just the first stop!
Since Saturday was going to be busy, we decided to go out Friday night and explore the city. Of course food had to be involved so after some research, I found a place called Morgan Street Food Hall & Market. Basically, it's like a mall food court without the mall. There were so many food choices all under one roof. Soul food to Hibachi to Thai to seafood to pizza to burgers. Lee chose pizza; I chose seafood and I forgot to take pictures of both! My fish looked better than it tasted. It definitely wasn't Louisiana fish fry! But overall, we had a good experience there.
After that, we planned to go to an escape room but ended up missing our reservation so we had to reschedule for the next day. Not gonna lie, I was upset, but our next stop made up for it.
Since the escape room was a bust for the night, we decided to go get dessert and drive around the city to see some historical sites. We found a place called Goodberry's Frozen Custard. This trip I tried to be intentional about eating things that I wouldn't normally get so I tried a Snicker sundae. It had vanilla custard, caramel, peanuts, and hot fudge. Lee had the plain strawberry custard. The custard was so good and fresh! You could tell it was made with real, fresh milk.
Saturday was the day of the wedding but it was also the day we planned to see some friends of ours who lived in the area. We also planned to go back to the escape room to actually do it since we missed it the night before. We escaped with 2 minutes to spare!
We went to another food hall for lunch. This one was called the Transfer Co. Food Hall. Literally like 5 minutes down the street from the first one we went to. I got better pictures this time around! I had a taste for tacos so I went to a place called Dank Burrito. Lee had a patty melt from Mama Crow's. Although it was about 40 degrees outside, we decided to get some ice cream and cookies from Captain Cookie and the Milkman. I have been eating chocolate chip cookies like CRAZY since December so of course I had to try one of those too! This place was cool was because they had a window where you could actually see them making the cookie dough from scratch. The ice cream was fresh and you could taste the real milk in it as well. North Carolina knows how to do ice cream!
After eating we headed to the wedding. It was a beautiful, simple, rustic wedding. I didn't take any pictures of the actual wedding ceremony, because like, how rude? But we made sure to get pictures after! Where they had the cocktail hour, they had a pool filled with rose petals. I've only seen that on Instagram, never in real life, so I made sure to get a picture! They had fancy hors d'Oeuvres like strawberry goat cheese bruschetta. I have never had goat cheese, but since I was trying to be adventurous, I tried it... and it was actually good! I think I ate about 3... haha!
Our trip came to an end Sunday morning. We flew American, and you could definitely tell. We couldn't find our gate because the screen monitors weren't working. The travel agent at the gate put up computer paper with the flight information. Southwest has definitely spoiled me!
So what were my take aways from this trip?
North Carolina is beautiful and knows how to do ice cream!
Always be 15 minutes early to your escape room reservation.
Food halls are amazing and should be everywhere!
Goat cheese is actually good, but I will probably never eat it outside of a cocktail hour.
Keep dating your spouse especially after kids.
You and your kids will survive sometime apart. I promise!
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