SC Trip: Charleston/Mt. Pleasant/Isle of Palms

After spending Sunday afternoon in Beaufort, we decided to head to Charleston for the rest of the afternoon. We planned on spending the rest of Sunday and all of Monday in Charleston, but our plans took a little detour!

We arrived in Charleston

and headed toward King Street since we heard most of the action was on or around that area. There was a lot of shopping on King Street and quite a few bars and restaurants. We ended up going to Closed for Business for a drink and then went to Charleston Beer Works to play some pool. Trevor won all games, but I do have to give myself some credit...I definitely held my own!




I just love being married to this handsome man!

We heard several great reviews about Hyman's Seafood, so we decided to stop in there for dinner. Plus, a lady in the tourist attractions booth gave us a coupon for a free appetizer, win win!

Our appetizer was grits and fried green tomatoes covered with an alfredo sauce. I had never had a fried green tomato before and I was a little apprehensive about the grits, but it was AMAZING!

Our main meal was all SHRIMP!...fried shrimp, BBQ shrimp, buffalo shrimp, steamed shrimp, boiled shrimp (do I sound like Bubba from Forest Gump yet?)

We were so full and didn't even come close to finishing!

That night we stayed the night in Mt. Pleasant with Trevor's cousin Kim. If you are not familiar with Charleston and Mt. Pleasant, you should know that there is basically one bridge that takes you from one to the other.

The next morning we got up with all intentions of heading to Charleston. However, there was a jumper on the bridge, so police were obviously involved and they ended up shutting down the bridge. There is only one other way into Charleston from Mt. Pleasant and it was obviously backed up with traffic, but on top of that, there was a 3 car wreck on that highway and ironically, one of the people in the wreck was Kim's neighbor. Needless to say, we weren't going to get into Charleston any time soon, so we ended up going to Isle of Palms. It is not really a touristy place, but we decided to find a beach and have some lunch! We found a little secluded beach spot because we just had to touch the sand and then we ate lunch at a place called Seabiscuits which was a quaint place that was suggested to us.

After killing some time in Isle of Palms, Charleston was a little more accessible, so we headed back over to Charleston. Many people suggested that we do a carriage tour because they give you a lot of information about the history of Charleston. We ended up doing Palmetto Carriage tours and it was one of my favorite parts of the trip!!

 We learned so much!!! Here are a few fun facts that we learned:
*Many of you know that a pineapple is a sign of hospitality, but do you know why? Well, way back when, many husbands were merchants and had to go away for war and such. While the husbands were away, the wives were not allowed to have any visitors during that time. When the husbands would come home, they always brought fruit baskets home for their wives. The wives would then take the pineapple from the fruit basket and place it on their front porch as a sign that their husbands were home and they were now accepting visitors. Also, if you are staying at someone's house and they serve you pineapple upside-down cake, it is a sign that you have over stayed your welcome! Luckily, we were not served any pineapple upside-down cake all week.
*When you eat seafood, it is common that you get hush puppies with your meal. Do you know how they got their name? Again, way back when there were several great fires in Charleston and because of this, the large homes would have the kitchen separate from the house. That way, if a fire broke out in the kitchen, it would not affect the whole house. So, after the servants prepared the meal, they would then have to transport it from the kitchen to the house. The owners of the home then became concerned that the servants were eating the food while cooking and transporting the food to the dining room. To fix the problem they decided to make the servants whistle the whole time. It's really hard to whistle when you have food in your mouth, so they thought this was the perfect solution. The problem is, when the servants would be whistling when outside, the dogs around the neighborhood would come running. This was disastrous since the servants were carrying a ton of food. So the servants decided to create little fried goodies to keep in their pockets, so when the dogs came running at them, they could through the dogs their fried goodies...which is now the hush puppy!

We heard several other stories, but they might not be as interesting without actually seeing the city...so what I'm saying is, if you ever got to Charleston, you must take the carriage tour!


One of the beautiful homes. The homes there are very pricey. We know that one home sold for 3 million dollars and that was a steal! Plus, the property tax runs about $50,000 a year! WOW!



This was the horse that took us on our carriage tour. His name was Buttercup.

 After the carriage tour we decided to walk around Market Street for a bit. I ended up getting a little souvenir there and then we got another one of my FAV ice creams!
Haagen Daz-chocolate chocolate chip! Can you tell I love dessert, specifically ice cream!!

After seeing all of Market Street we ended up heading back to Mt. Pleasant to stay at Kim's again that night. We were planning on going to watch the sunset at the beach, but we all started talking that night and before we knew it, it was time to go to sleep! I just loved getting to talk with Trevor's family and get to know that better! That's one of the things that made the trip so fun!

The next day we were headed to Georgetown and Plantersville...stay tuned!