Rockin’ In The USA: Augusta + Charlotte

People & Places

By Rosie Rockets on August 13, 2014 • ( 29 Comments )

Welcome back to my travel journal from my trip to the U.S. – “Rockin’ in the USA”. Last week I brought you tales from San Francisco and Seattle and now it’s time to travel onto Augusta and Charlotte, where my much awaited meet and greet with Def Leppard was going to take place. Can you smell the leather pants in the air?!

DAY SEVEN: Up at the butt crack of dawn to catch our early flight to Atlanta. It’s about a four hour flight, plus there’s a three hour time difference AND another two hour drive to Augusta. PHEW! At the airport we met up with Karen, my blogging buddy (from KPSays) who I met in Sydney earlier this year, and her husband Joey. This amazing and fun couple live just outside of Augusta and were such gracious and generous hosts to have us stay with them and all their furbabies; seven cats, two dogs and a dove! 🙂

That evening we headed out to Rhinehart’s Oyster Bar, a fabulous restaurant which was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a southern eatery! I finally got to try grits and hush puppies which were delicious. How will I survive without these at home? We were also lucky enough to attend a wedding while we were there. Well, it was actually a little redneck reception out the back and they all wore their best shorts and tanks! LOL! 😛

Back at Karen and Joey’s we stayed up until the wee hours catching up with some drinks and watching trashy American TV.

DAY EIGHT: It was a day full of ticking off “firsts” on my list, starting off with; Waffle House! Just what the doctor ordered after staying up half the night drinking. Then it was an intense shopping escapade. Went to Ulta (I’d never been to one before) and absolutely went cray! I was like a kid in a candy store and needless to say my credit card got a good bashing there. Next it was T.J. Maxx (yep, first time here as well) and I was in heaven. I never realised how awesome this store was! I picked up some gorgeous Steve Madden leopard print sandals and a scarf that were both so cheap!! We also hit up Sephora and some other stores but by this stage we were wiped.

That evening we had Mexican for dinner, where the meal was bigger than my head. Things truly are bigger in the south! Then it was off to karaoke at another Mexican restaurant, but there was no chance of us getting up to sing here. 1) we were way too sober and 2) everybody sang a country song WTF?! Coming from Australia where country music isn’t popular this was quite daunting hahahaha! We all vowed that we’d definitely have to get up and sing karaoke on our adventure, but for tonight we’d leave it. Tomorrow was a big day after all 🙂

DAY NINE: D DAY, A.K.A. – DEF LEPPARD MEET N’ GREET! To say I was excited for this day to arrive would be an understatement. We hit the road just before midday for the drive to Charlotte and arrived just before 3pm and found that our hotel room wasn’t ready. Not to fear, we went and found a Chick-fil-A (ANOTHER FIRST!) and had lunch before heading back to get ready for the meet and greet. As we left the hotel we were all looking HAWT and we were all raring to go. Once we got to the venue it was BUCKETING down with rain and we didn’t have an umbrella – oh no! We managed to stay pretty dry under some awning but then we were told to line up in the FUCKING RAIN and of course we got soaking wet! Didn’t these people know I was about to meet my future husband(s)?! Thankfully the wait wasn’t too bad, although our hair was stuffed by this stage. Once through the gates we managed to zhuzh it into place and hoped that we’d look fabulous enough to warrant a backstage tour 😉

While waiting in (another) line we were all given raffle tickets so we could win some merch and Karen’s number was drawn and she lovingly got me a pair of Love Bites hot pink panties ha! Then it was our turn *insert wanting to vomit in my mouth here!* DL’s manager, Melvin, was there and asked me where we were from and I practically shouted MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA!!! He then pulled back the curtain and announced “all the way from Melbourne, Australia…” and there were my lads from Sheffield! I was soooooo nervous! It really was a blur, but I managed to say hi to them all and eventually got to Rick (Allen, the drummer, who famously *ahem* agreed to walk me down the aisle, it’s true! Check my Twitter feed!) I told him that my sis and I had gone to see them in Vegas last year and that we loved it so much and I had to come back to see them again. He nodded and smiled and thanked me and looked at me intently (it coulda been that I was ranting and raving) and then we all got in line and got our pic taken and THEN IT HAPPENED! As I turned to thank him he said to me: “yes I remember, we met in the coffee shop in Vegas, right?” OK, now this is where Rosie splits in two; real life Rosie manages to nod and say “yes we did” and again thank them all as we walk away MEANWHILE internal Rosie has just died and gone to ROCK N’ ROLL HEAVEN!! RICK ALLEN REMEMBERED ME!

Insert tears of joy below;

As if the night couldn’t get any better we then had 2nd row seats to the show! It was a bloody fantastic concert as usual from the Lep boys and then they were followed up by KISS. I’d grown up with brothers who were mad KISS fans so it was very cool to witness their crazy stage antics. This was definitely going down in history as one of the best days EVAH!

DAY TEN: Still on a major high, we had a quick brunch before heading out to a mall in Charlotte and I managed to pick up some great bargains. Finally I was able to exercise my shopping muscles! Coach was having an additional 50% off to their already sale prices and I couldn’t pass on a gorgeous pastel pink, laser cut handbag and a pair of black patent pumps – watch out for them in future OOTD posts!

That evening back in Augusta, we had an absolutely to die for southern -style BBQ prepared by the gorgeous Joey! He’d been slaving away all day preparing while us gals were lusting over rock stars haha! The south has truly been an awesome experience. 🙂

Next stop, New Orleans!..

 

 

Categories: People & Places, Travel

Tagged as: America, Augusta, Charlotte, Concert, Def Leppard, Georgia, KISS, KPSays, North Carolina, Rock and Roll, USA, Waffle House