We decided to go to Charleston for a long weekend last weekend. Mom drove down to our house early Thursday morning and then we both packed into her car and I drove the rest of the way to Charleston. This was the first time that mom and I have ever done anything like this, and I expected my dad to be a little more worried about us going than he ended up being. He actually was really encouraging of the idea. We had a pretty good trip down to Charleston. We did run into some traffic a little ways outside of Columbia. There had been a terrible accident on I-26 earlier in the morning on the opposite side of the interstate. We looked it up later to find out what had happened and it turned out that a van and 18 wheeler had collided then went across the median into the west bound lanes hitting another 18 wheeler and a car. A third 18 wheeler jack-knifed trying to avoid the wreck. Sadly there were fatalities in the wreck and one of the trucks was carrying batteries and battery acid had leaked onto the pavement making clean up from the wreckage much harder. The interstate was still closed at 9 oclock that night.
We made it to our hotel at about 5 oclock. I was a little nervous about the location of our hotel. When we were looking for hotels back in July, we had learned that the North Charleston area was the more dangerous area of town. However, when I was looking for hotels this time around we were not able to find a reasonably priced hotel other than in North Charleston. I looked and looked, and finally decided to go with a relatively new looking hotel in the North Charleston area that had had a lot of good reviews. I was able to breath a sigh of relief when we pulled into the Holiday Inn Express parking lot. We were in a more commercial area, right next to a mall. The hotel was clean and pretty new. The hotel staff was very friendly and helpful.
Once we got to our room, we called Zack and my Dad to let them know that we were safely in Charleston. Then, we headed downtown to have a look around and to get dinner. The last time that I was in Charleston, someone suggested the restaurant Fleet Landing. So, Mom and I decided to go there to have dinner. The restaurant looked a little run down from the outside, but once you walked through the doors, you entered into a very modern looking room. They had Styrofoam chandeliers, a wall of orange life vests, and clear thick vinyl dividers between booths. Mom and I had eaten a late lunch at Wendy's on our way down to Charleston. So, we were not too hungry. So, we both ended up ordering a grilled chicken sandwich. The sandwich was really good and came with fries. Mom and I were both really full by the time we left the restaurant.
After dinner, we walked around the river front and a little around downtown before we headed back to our hotel. We had a little bit of trouble finding our way back to the interstate to get back to our hotel, but once we found our way to I-26 then we had an easy straight shot back up to our hotel.
Once back in our room, we sat down to figure our what we wanted to do the next day, and we watched a little TV before going to sleep.
Friday morning, we ate continental breakfast at our hotel. The breakfast was one of the reasons that I chose the hotel that we ended up staying at. I wanted to make sure that we would have a good breakfast so that we would only need either a big lunch or a big dinner each day.
We headed into town and walked to the Aquarium to buy tickets for a harbor tour and horse and carriage ride of the city. We had a little bit of time to kill before our tour. So, we went through the Fort Sumter memorial. There were different exhibits with little historical facts about Charleston and the role of Fort Sumter in Charleston's history. It was really interesting...and it got us in out of the sun for a little while.
We headed to board the boat at about 1 o'clock. The tour of the harbor was a lt of fun, and it gave us a different aspect of Charleston. The tour lasted about 1.5 hours. We even saw a couple of bottle nosed dolphins.
After the harbor tour, we headed back into historical Charleston and did our horse and carriage tour. I had really enjoyed our carriage tour in July and I was looking forward to going on another one. The carriage tour was about a hour long and was really a lot of fun. Charleston is filled with History and it is a clean and beautiful city. It was fun to get to go on a tour of the city and learn a little more about Charleston.
After our day of touring, Mom and I were starving. The last time that I was inCharleston, Mama Sandy, Rach and I stumbled across an amazing restaurant called cru' cafe. We had gone there for Lunch back in july and LOVED it. So, I thought that Mom and I should try it out together. We got there at about 5 and ordered off of their dinner menu. We couldn't decide what we wanted. So, we each ordered something different and then shared. we ordered a Pablano mozzarella Fried chicken served with scalloped potatoes, honey chipolte salsa, and steamed vegetables and a pork osso bucco which was served with mashed sweet potatoes and green beans. Both dishes were AMAZING!! and we were really stuffed when we left.
After dinner, we spent a few more hours walking around. We went to the Market where they were having a craft show. I found a beautiful sterling silver necklace with a white coin pearl that Mom got me for my birthday. I LOVE it. It is so simple and elegant. We talked with the girl that had made the necklace for a while. We found out that there is a 10 year waiting list to have a booth at the open market. 10 years!! She even said that the people that had booths were willing those to their children. CRAZY! There were lots of really neat booths at the craft show. There was one lady that made necklace pendant, rings, and earrings out of old china patterns. They were beautiful....and expensive.
After looking around the market for a while, we decided to head back to the hotel for the night. We called the guys to fill them in on our day. Zack was going over to our friends Christy and Hector's house to watch the Brave's game. I was really glad to hear that he would be over at there house and not just sitting at home by himself all night....and even better, the Braves ended up winning. Yay!
Saturday morning, Mom and I headed sown for breakfast at the hotel and then we headed back out to Charleston. We ended up finding free parking down by the battery...the only problem was that we had to parallel park to get it. Thankfully, I managed to park the car without trouble. We walked around the battery for a while looking at the monuments and cannons that were on display there. We then headed up toward the market. On our way, we took in the beautiful architecture and went through a REALLY old graveyard. We worked our way to the market. We had walked through the market the day before and had seen a couple of booths with really great things and we decided to go back and buy some items. Yay, a few Christmas presents taken care of!
We were getting pretty hungry after all of our shopping and we walked up beyond the market to find somewhere to eat We passed Jestine's, a restaurant that a friend had suggested....unfortunately, there was a LONG line of people waiting outside the restaurant. We walked a little further up and caught the tail end of a Farmer's market in one of the parks. I wish that we had made it up there sooner, because there were lots of neat things to look at, but by the time we got there, everyone was closing their booths. So, we walked back down toward downtown and ended up eating at Magnolia's. We each ordered something different and then shared like we had the day before. Mom ordered a roasted vegetable sandwich and sweet potato fries and I ordered pork bbq sliders with peach coleslaw and sweet potato fries. Both entree's were really good. Although, the roasted vegetable sandwich did not have quite as much flavor as I had expected from the desription of the sandwich in the menu, but it was still very tasty. Mom and I both LOVE sweet Potato fries, and these were REALLY good...good thing we both ordered some!
We walked around town a little more after we ate and then headed down to the Battery where our car was parked. We sat down at the battery by the harbor and watched people and boats for a while before we headed back to our hotel.
Mom and I settled in for the night and watched about 3-4 hallmark movies back to back before we headed off to sleep. We had tried to pack up as much as we could that night so that we would be able to get out on the road as quickly as possible in the morning. We needed to get back in time for Mom to drive back while it was still light out.
Sunday morning we went down for a quick breakfast and then packed up to hit the road. We had a good trip home. We took a different....more scenic route home. When we looked up information about the wreck that we had passed on I26, we saw a lot of comments about how bad that part of the interstate was. So, we looked for a different way to go home. It turned out to be a really pretty drive...a little slower, but much more scenic.
I had a great time getting to spend time with my sweet Mom. It was really nice to get to take a weekend and just spend time with her. It was a really special trip with lots of fun memories. Hopefully we will get to go back to Charleston sometime soon....maybe we will get to bring Dad and Zack back with us and go to the forts and ships..
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