GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!

Last weekend Derrick and I road tripped to Hickory to meet Nikki and Justin to then road trip to Charlotte. Bayern Munich, Derrick's favorite club soccer team from Germany, was in town and playing at the Panther's stadium in Charlotte on Saturday night. We've had tickets forever and we were both really excited when Nikki and Justin could come too. Justin is also a big Bayern fan and Nikki and I were happy to come along, cheer, and get some time together.

We arrived to Charlotte early to hang out for a while. We booked an escape room for early afternoon because....duh...travel with the Marceys and you're going to do an escape room. While we were waiting for our time slot we walked around downtown Matthews. It was such a cute little town.

There was an adoption event going on and this guy was almost too cute to leave behind.

I do not get to see this girl enough. We've been friends for 15 years now...is that right Nikki?? I love hanging out with her and this was the perfect weekend to get a lot of hang time with one of my favorites.

We did the detective room at Escape Hour. We've done a room here before with Jay and Jack so Derrick and I were familiar with the place. It was a 10 person room that we did with just 4 people and we were minutes from escaping! We were on the last puzzle and we were just doing it wrong. Bummer but still a fun room to do.

Officially my first experience in a game store. Impressions: nerdy. Can I put that on the internet? We had some time to kill between the escape room and the soccer game and there was a game Justin wanted to check out so he and Derrick tested it for an hour. We ended up walking out with 2 games each, so as nerdy as I felt in this store, it was well worth the visit.

Our hotel was awesome. It was the Marriot city center and only a 15 minute walk from the stadium. The rooms were fully renovated and this was our penthouse view.

I have mixed feelings about the game experience. The game was actually great but, word of caution to anyone going to the panthers game, no purses allowed! At all, ever. It wasn't on the tickets and there weren't any signs. We had to wait in a super long line, then get shuffled to a bag line, and then get told we can either throw our bags away or take them back to the hotel. Luckily Nikki and I split off from Derrick and Justin when we went to the bag line so they were able to go on into the game while Nikki and I walked back to the hotel. In the end, we missed 35 minutes of the 90 minute game. It honestly felt like we didn't even go....it was such a short time actually being in the game.

The dreaded bag line. 

Bayern won 4-1. Three of those goals were scored while Nikki and I were still trying to get into the stadium :(

Dinner after. Like my wHagonweel jersey? Funny story. I bought a Bayern tank top for the game and accidentally threw it away while I was cleaning the house. My wHagonweel jersey fit right in though.

While we were at dinner we found an empty escape room and booked it for redemption. It sucks to fail a room and we were all itching for a win. We found Codescape. It had good reviews and an empty room at 11:15. We always try to book last minute so we have the best chance of not getting random people in the room with us. It's never as fun.

This was hands down the BEST escape room we have ever done! I can't explain it and give it away but I'm serious. We couldn't stop talking about it and I woke up talking about it the next morning. It was amazing and immersive. Everything was so incredibly well done. It was a bit scary which was unexpected and I screamed the whole way through but holey moley. If you get a chance to try Codescape you won't be disappointed.

We got out with 17 minutes to spare which seems like the room is too easy but we were just clicking on all cylinders and the room was so amazing we could have gotten out in 10 minutes and probably still felt like it was awesome.

It was an amazing weekend and I'm so glad we got to have some friend time with Nikki and Justin. They are some of the best!