Day Twenty Five: The Carolinas

We said goodbye to our hostel and are definitely not coming back to stay there. There were a few positives like the location and the fast internet but they did not make up for a lack of cleanliness.

Farewell Hostel

Our time in South Carolina has been enjoyable but we were off to North Carolina now. But first we made a stop for lunch. Shealy’s is a BBQ place old style. You enter and pay about $12 per person. Then you find yourself in a big room with a long buffet line. You grab a plate and fill it up with all sorts of Southern favourites. Tons of different vegies, fried chicken, pork BBQ and hot bread rolls. There were some things we didn’t recognise but it was fun to try a whole variety of foods. Our plates were piled up modestly but some of the other diners had huge piles of BBQ meat on their plates.

Hot buffet line

My plate of food

Everyone eats on long tables with many people on each table. There is also a salad bar with many colourful extras. Southern salads sometimes have some extra sweet additions such as marshmallows and jelly. I chose a sweet potato puree that turned out to be dessert sweet. It tasted like there were a million melted marshmallows in it. This was supposed to be part of the savoury course. It was a bit strange.

Part of the salad bar what do you think is in the pink one?

There were also desserts. Heng and I were pretty full but we tried the delicious, creamy banana pudding and I had some cherry Jello as well. Overall it was a great experience. The food was tasty and I liked the family atmosphere. There were many multi-generational families eating Saturday lunch together.

The long tables

creamy yummy banana pudding

Finally we arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our first stop was a very cool comic book shop for Heng. Spiderman, Doctor Octopus and Spiderman were also customers there.

You can do it Spiderman!

What are you doing in the bathroom Superman?

Our hotel was not in a very central location but as we were staying there only one night we didn’t mind. It was clean and comfortable. We had an afternoon swim in the pool. Then headed out to dinner.

Interesting round shower in the hotel

It was a Japanese restaurant but as it was run by Taiwanese and they had a special Chinese menu. We enjoyed some delicious Chinese food that felt like we were back home in Australia. Sometimes it is nice to have everyday food that we enjoy. 

Heng is happy to eat Chinese