A couple weeks ago, two friends and I decided to get dinner at a restaurant that opened in Winston last year, The Porch. While I’d heard that the food was amazing, I didn’t realize how popular The Porch actually was until it took us forever to find parking on a Thursday night.
On my last day in Pittsburgh, my dad and I headed over to the University of Pittsburgh’s campus to take in the fall leaves and the sunshine. I was also looking for any excuse to break out my brand new parka from Banana Republic, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
While we were up in Pittsburgh this past weekend, I decided to check one of my mom’s old haunts for myself–Walnut Street. Located in the Shadyside neighborhood, Walnut Street actually reminds me a lot of King Street in Charleston what with the abundant number of stores and restaurants lining the road.
Growing up in Florida, I definitely took our yearly (sometimes more) visits to Disney World and Universal Studios for granted. Even now, it’s crazy to me that some of my friends haven’t experienced the joy of getting a photo with my favorite mascot, Mickey Mouse. Now that I live about 14 hours and 700+ miles north, I look back on my theme park memories fondly as I haven’t been back since I graduated from high school.
My last trip to Universal Studios was about a year after the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter which was, and still is, wildly popular with young, old and everyone in between. Highlights of the experience include Hogwarts up on the top of the hill, Hogsmeade, and the Hogwarts Express.
Every year in the fall, students at Wake look forward to what’s known as Fall Break which is basically a fancy name for the three-day weekend we get off from classes. I usually go home for this break but to switch things up my dad and grandparents came down to Wake Forest for the football game against Syracuse.
Dad flew into Greensboro the night before my grandparents arrived and we got dinner to celebrate the beginning of the weekend. The next afternoon, after my grandparents checked into their hotel, the four of us grabbed a light lunch downtown before making our way over to the Reynolda House. Fun fact of the day, Wake’s campus was funded by the tobacco industry. Yep, the land that now serves as my beloved university once belong to R.J. Reynolds and his wife, Katherine Reynolds, who at one point were considered to be the wealthiest couple in North Carolina. Reynolds was the founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which is still based in Winston-Salem.
Brownie points to those of y’all who know what show I referenced in the title of this post!
On Sunday morning, I met up with my dad and grandparents bright and early to to grab breakfast at Mary’s Gourmet Diner (formerly known and still widely referred to as Breakfast of Course) before everyone headed home. Breakfast of Course is massively popular and people start lining up outside before the restaurant is even open to get a table. While I am usually not a huge fan of waiting in lines, the food at Breakfast of Course is just that good that I was willing to drag my family out into the cold to stand in line for half an hour. I feel like I wouldn’t feel this passionately about the matter if my friends would actually wake up early enough to go with me, but sadly I usually have to wait until my parents come to visit.
