Visitors – Sannipanni

OK first of all, what you’ve all been waiting for… me licking my elbow. That just sounds wrong….

Anyway… Thursday night after a quick trip to the grocery store I picked up my middle sister Anke from the airport. Driving there was fun, I kept humming “In The Ghetto” and sure enough the gas station on West Blvd had 5 police cars there with lights on and a lot of uhm ghetto inhabitants there. Fun! So I took Anke home on the less ghetto road and we went uptown to look around. Not much was going on there but we grabbed a few slices of pizza at Fuel and then took some photos of uptown and later the skyline. Anke was quite impressed by the Queencity compared to her town in CT. Well, yeah sorry but Charlotte rocks ;-).

Friday after a skype session with the other 3/5 of our family we headed to Charleston. Love love love love love that city! After checking into our hotel and being escorted to our room by two huge black dudes (scaary) to fix our security latch we headed back across the bridge, parked the car in the middle of no where for free and strolled around the streets. We did some souvenir shopping and I got a milk foamer (yay) and then we had dinner at the Charleston Crab House. This place used to be FANTASTIC. I’d say now it’s good. Not amazing but still quite alright. Might look for some other place to eat next time I’m in town. Anke had forgotten her IDs in CT so we hung out at Starbucks for a bit before she made me buy some beer at the grocery store which we then enjoyed while watching ice dancing and Bridget Jones. Awesome!

Saturday we headed to Patriot’s Point, which was on our side of the island anyway and chilled out there for a while (as in gift shop and food). A little boat took us to Ft. Sumter, the little island and fortress where the American Civil War started. We weren’t really in awe but did enjoy the sandbank there and I dare say we got a tan! A speedy drive back up north to Charlotte (well as speedy as you can be on a two lane highway in the US….) and Charleston was gone. So sad! Driving was kind of funny. Imagine two little girls in a tiny car zooming by and then imagine this tiny car at a truck stop trying to find diesel gas (because that’s mostly used for trucks here and not every gas station has diesel and they have separate pumps). Must have been hilarious looking. I did record time, less than three hours of driving. Wow!

I treated Anke to RuSans for sushi and then we drove uptown to meet with Manuel, Massimo, Giorgio, Ash and Luca for some desert and then a chillout beer at the Irish pub. A nice, relaxing night. The night was over too soon though as my upstairs neighbor was ~~walking~~ marching around her apartment way too early. So we got up and went grocery shopping and Starbucksing and then started cooking. We made deviled eggs and then potatoes, ham and broccoli with sauce hollandaise and a little salad. Birgit, Ash and Luca came over to eat and just as we finished eating it was already time to take Anke back to the airport. Very sad :(. But she sounded pretty convinced that she’d be back soon to hang out in the queen city and with my nice friends. Oh-kay. That’d be nice! 🙂

Snow!

January 18, 2008 8 Comments

Yes that’s right, we got some snow this week! It only lasted 15 hours but it was fun while it lasted. I hope that was all of winter for me this year but I think the forecast said snow for tomorrow and temperatures on Sunday from -10 – 2C. Fun – NOT! I can’t quite believe that it’ll be that cold but we’ll see.

So anyway, Rich and I had a great weekend here in the Queen City. After a yummy dinner with Stefan at Fiamma’s (service took forever but the food was good) I picked Rich up at the airport and we spend the night chatting and catching up. Good times! To make his trip worth wile, we did a touristy thing on Saturday and checked out Historic Latta Plantation. It was actually really nice with a civil war winter camp enactment and we enjoyed the sunshine out at their lake (yes it was still nice and warm then). A huge pasta lunch warmed us up at home again and then we relaxed some before it was time to head out again. We took the light rail (so cool) to uptown and watched the Bobcats lose against the Detroit Pistons. The game was well worth the 15$ tickets we got but unfortunately the cats lost in the very last minute. :(. But we had fun and continued to Fuel Pizza for dinner and then met up with Giorgio and some other people at Feast and then went to HOM where we danced the night away. Max was in town and he was super nice and dropped us off at home after closing time.
Sunday we strolled through my neighborhood for a long time with quick stops to grocery shop and grad a coffee. It felt so European to haul around groceries and walk around on side walks. Haha. At home we watched The Man of Aran, which our tour guide on the Aran Islands had talked about in Ireland. Interesting movie… Sushi at Ru Sans was a nice grand finale for a great weekend and it was sad to drop of Richie at the airport on Monday.

This week has been good so far. Cooked and watched National Treasure with Giorgio and then went to P.F. Chang’s with Vanessa and there should be more fun coming my way this weekend.

Work is going well. I love the combination of all that creative marketing stuff with the technical machine stuff and I’m learning so much. And good news, my boss wants me to stick around after my internship (yay)so it’s back to working on visa crap. Yugh! So seeing that I might be here for a few more years (let’s hope) I did some credit history building today and opened a savings account as well as applied for a credit card. Not too sure that they’ll give it to me but the lady insisted that we try that first before getting a secured credit card. OK then. What with my student ID good until March that might actually work. We’ll see.

A Visit from Anke

Snow!