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Aleigh

Editor at Skirt!

I am: a doggie mom, a newlywed, a Scrabble enthusiast, a meticulous speller, a world traveler, and the editor of the Charlotte edition of Skirt! (Not usually all at once.) When I'm not writing about Charlotte's coolest women, you can find me cheering on my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers, trying to p...

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Vacations on the cheap!

Last Friday when I was at the Go Red for Women luncheon, one of the women at my table mentioned that although she’s practically a Charlotte native, she hasn’t visited most of the local attractions. She hasn’t been to the museums. She hasn’t been to the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, or to the Charlotte Museum of History…she hasn’t been to the McColl Center.

“I know, it’s awful,” she said.

But then a strange thing happened – several of the women at our table said they hadn’t been to see most of what Charlotte has to offer, either.

Always being one to give unsolicited advice (my friends can probably confirm this fact), I piped up with a suggestion.

“One of my favorite things to do is talk my husband into having a ‘vacation in our city’ mini-vacation,” I said. “We’ll plan a whole weekend of touristy things—sightseeing, visiting museums, testing out the public transportation, wandering around—and we pretend to be tourists in our own city. It’s something we’ve been doing for almost as long as we’ve been together, and it started because we were too broke for a vacation when we really needed one. We had such a great time…we’ve done it ever since.”

If you’ve never vacationed in your hometown, you might want to try it. You can camp out in the backyard and pretend like the creature comforts are far away (but still use your own bathroom). Or you can test out all of the museums so you know which ones to recommend when your family comes for a visit--the Mint Museum offers free admission on Tuesday evenings.

It’s a lot cheaper than flying or driving to a different city, paying for a hotel room, boarding your pets, and it’s just as much fun. Chances are you’ll find things out about your city that you never knew existed.