Where The Ocean Meets The Sky

Charleston is beautiful. Where else can you lounge on the Atlantic coast, peruse an open air market and stroll downtown through historic neighborhoods that are quaint and colorful, all within 15 miles??? A city that is more than 300 years old has a plethora of stories to tell. The captial was moved from Charleston to Columbia in 1790. SC was the first state to secede from the union during the civil war and the 1989 category 4 hurricane Hugo that destroyed 80% of the barrier island homes; losses that estimate ~ $2.8 billion. One last cool fact is the state motto: DUM SPIRO SPERO, meaning "WHILE I BREATHE I HOPE".

Onto my stories:

The drive down sucked. We left at 8pm on Friday (June 30) and it took us 14 hours to get there. We figured driving through WV (and the mountains) at night tacked on an additional hour. Since we arrived before check-in on Saturday, we weren't able to pick up the keys to our house. So we did the next best thing - changed our clothes at Jeff (Jason's brother) and Cheri's apartment and headed to the beach. It was the closest thing to heaven that I could think of. Around 4pm, we headed to the real estate place to pick up the keys to our digs for the week.


The ocean was a 3 minute walk from the house. I awoke early on Sunday (~7am) and decided to chill on the beach before the crowds took over. It was breathtaking.



To make a long story short, we baked in the sun, drank and toured around the city (including a tour of Middleton Place, a rice plantation. That was pretty cool because Middleton was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Some of my favorite places we drank at were Henry's - because the live music was awesome, Poe's Tavern - named after Edgar Allan Poe - because of the deco, and Red's - which was on the water - because I drank too many Captain and Cokes, supposedly saw a dolphin and talked about how Jeff was going to be rich or broke by 30.

Since we rented a beach house, we didn't eat out too often. But out of the places we did eat out at, The Mustard Seed was my absolute favorite. The food, wine and even coffee were phenomenal. I definitely recommend it!!

A few things that we didn't do, which I wish we would have, were parasailing (800 feet in the air as opposed to 300 feet in Key West), renting wave runners and traveling to Savannah. I was super bummed about not driving the 2 hours to Savannah, but I didn't want to go alone. Oh well - maybe some other time. All in all, the week went by too quickly. The gorgeous weather, beautiful beaches and breath taking downtown made it very difficult to leave. I can see why Jeff chose to make Charleston his home.