Yesterday we drove up from Charleston where I had attended SQLSaturday #227. It’s not a bad drive, about three hours. The trees are different than Florida (more real trees and not palmetto) and we definitely noticed the hills, so much that we loaded an app on the phone just to marvel in flatlander fashion of altitude changes of a couple hundred feet from valley to crest and then back again. I think the highest we noted was just over 600 feet. Exciting stuff!
We (family is with me through tonight) are staying at the Hampton Inn. Never know what you’ll get with a hotel, but this one looks good. Everything clean and in good shape. We had dinner at Rock Bottom on Tryon St (lots of restaurants there). Good food and if you have a kid, they bring the rolled out pizza dough and the toppings to the table so they can ‘make’ their own pizza. The pretzel appetizers are different than expected, more like a crispy crunch bread stick with salt applied. Not bad, just different.
We drove around a little downtown, lots of one way streets, but overall not bad to get around. Weather is nice, maybe cool enough for a light jacket in the evening. Not freezing, not raining, and no time zone change for me this year – it’s nice to have a break from Seattle!
No big plans for today. I’ll go get checked in at the Convention Center and spend some time with the kids, find some place new for lunch, and then the Networking Dinner at 6 pm.