Haaaaappy Friday! It's my favorite day of the week :) I want to get this three-day weekend off to a great start with a blog post on what we did throughout our stay in South Carolina. In case you missed it, I wrote all about our hotel stay HERE. I'm going to be talking about all the places we ate in a separate post because there are just way too many good places to cram into here. I'll start off with day 2 in Charleston, since our first "day" was kind of a wash as we didn't arrive until about 8pm.

Day 2: Sunday

This was probably my favorite day of our visit. It was a pretty long day! We woke up and walked to mass around the corner at St. Mary of the Annunciation - it's the first Catholic church in the Southeastern US, and it hasn't been changed or remodeled much at all. It was so neat to go to church in a place people attended throughout so many significant historical events...churchgoers there told us about how war was fought right outside the church doors. Anyway, it's a really beautiful place that you could appreciate even if you aren't religious.



From there, we walked over to brunch at Poogan's Porch, which is a restaurant I had heard about and was dying to try. I'll explain more about it in my food post coming up, but I absolutely loved it.

Charleston is super walkable, so we spent the rest of the day exploring on foot. After brunch we walked over to Rainbow Row, which was a must-see for me. It's a scenic avenue of pink, purple, yellow, etc. colored houses, and a lot of them having flowering plants climbing the sides. Make sure you get a photo there if you ever visit!









From there we walked over to Washington Square, which is another spot of historical significance. We actually stopped here for a break from the heat around 2 o'clock because it's a quiet, shady park, and the heat had really gotten to us by this point.





Next, we went back to our hotel for the daily wine & cheese reception...a routine we got attached to VERY quickly haha! After refreshing, we got the car and went to Sullivan's Island. LOVED this place - it's a little quieter than Charleston and is very calming. Going there will always be a cherished memory for me, because it was the first time I set foot in the Atlantic Ocean. The water was SO warm - wow I couldn't believe it! The water in the Pacific here at home is always freezing cold and I almost never go in hahah. It started storming so we couldn't stay on the beach long, but we got to see an awesome double rainbow. That was the last stop of Sunday.





Sidenote: this may sound silly, but I actually cried on our second night here because I thought about leaving and it made me so sad - that's how much I was loving Charleston.

Day 3: Monday

We started off Monday at King Street, which is the main shopping "district" (it's a street of shops and restaurants that runs for a couple of miles) and headed to The Rise coffee bar, which was fab - will share more in the next post. We shopped the stores the rest of the day and then visited Daniel Island, which is another 10-minute ride on the bridge away from downtown. I really enjoyed going there in the evening....it's kind of like Sullivan's Island, but is newer and has a little more to do.






Day 4: Tuesday

Tuesday was Folly Beach day! I had a long list of things I wanted to see/do in Charleston, and this was one of three beaches we wanted to see. It's a really clean, beautiful beach, and I just love the little beach town they've got going there. We got lunch then rented bikes from this great place called Cool Breeze - which isn't really a place...it's a super nice southern dude with a trailer haha - for only $5/hour, and we rode all around the residential neighborhood of Folly Island. Loved doing that!!










We didn't get back to downtown until the evening, and we ended up spending the rest of the night resting and going to dinner. My mom and I went in the jacuzzi, and then we all read books and watched TV and had a nice night at the hotel.

Day 5: Wednesday

This was a great day, but it was also hard because it was the last day. We made sure to get up bright and early to get the most out of our last few hours - we were heading up to Columbia then down to Georgia in the afternoon, so we only had the morning to enjoy Charleston.

We rode bikes around the historic district, which was something we wanted to do the whole trip. There are bikes by Holy Spokes rental company located all over the city, and you reserve them & rent them through an app called SoBi. We got those and then rode from King Street to the Battery, which is about a 15 minute bike ride. It was such a great way to end our visit. We almost spent the whole morning on a tour of Fort Sumter (we really wanted to see it!), but we opted for the bikes because the tour would've taken up all our time.









The last picture of this street has the stones that were originally laid back in the 1700s - I found it so fascinating!! We actually accidentally turned onto it while bike riding, and BOY was that a bumpy ride hahah. Later that day we went up to Columbia, about 2 hours from Charleston, to meet our cousins who live in Charlotte, NC. We had a nice BBQ lunch and really enjoyed it there!

I always try not to be too wordy when I write these, but it usually ends up pretty lengthy. Whether you read the whole thing or skimmed, thank you so much! I really hope you enjoyed hearing about our time in Charleston. Stay tuned for our time in Savannah, GA next! xoxo