Travel Thursday: Exploring Downtown Charleston

 

A couple of days ago I introduced you to the beginning of our Charleston vacation! We arrived in town late afternoon on Saturday, so we settled into our hotel and then headed downtown to explore. Our hotel was about a half hour from downtown, so by the time we drove in, found a parking garage that still had space (hello, holiday weekend) and made our way into the heart of the city, it was nearly dinnertime.

                I’d read that the City Market (like a giant farmer’s market) is also open Friday and Saturday nights from March-December. I’d never been to a farmer’s market at night before, so we decided to try that. This market is housed in permanent buildings, and I think there were three or four of these long, skinny building stretched out through multiple city blocks. Not all the booths were open for the night market, but we had fun exploring! We found our Christmas ornament souvenir and another little treasure for our house.

                While exploring, we saw the Charleston Crab House seafood restaurant and noticed it had rooftop seating. That sounded fun, so we put in our names and only had to wait about a half hour. Ryan tried shrimp and grits – and actually enjoyed it – and I got a blackened fish. (Donated the bun and most of the fries to Ryan.)

                After dinner, we walked around some more and wanted coffee and dessert, so we were excited to find a legitimate dessert café. Alas, they didn’t have any seating, so we asked for ours to go. We ordered a sundae to share, but it was ready about a full ten minutes before our coffee and was mostly soup by the time we found a park bench where we could eat. It wasn’t the best experience, which made me so sad!

                By that time, we were tired and ready for some sleep, so we went back to the hotel. Sunday morning was supposed to bring more rain, so we had breakfast at the hotel and spent some time in Bible study/reading/napping, and then we headed back into the heart of the city for more fun.

                We went back to the City Market and got some sandwiches, and then we took them to a cute little park to enjoy lunch outside by the fountain!

                Ryan really wanted a pineapple whip (and I don’t think I’ve had one before…if so, I didn’t remember), so we got those to enjoy while walking around. It was so hot and so crowded.

                Found the cutest fire station!

                And Rainbow Row. These colorful houses are a Charleston landmark, but I was surprised at how hard they were to see through the trees! I guess the pictures I’ve seen are not summer photos.

                We wandered down by the water and walked around a bit. It started looking stormy, and we were ready for some air conditioning and coffee, so we went in search of that – by way of the Pineapple Fountain.

                We found a little coffee shop called Clerks. It was attached to a hotel and kinda fancy. We ordered Americanos and shared a cannoli.

                Ryan’s one goal for the trip was to find a cool hat, so we went back to City Market to check out the hat vendors. He found one! I loved it.

                Then we walked foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr in a lot of people to see the theater where Noah and Allie had their first date in The Notebook.

                Then we had to walk foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr back!

                We were hot and tired by then, so we called it a day, found a Publix to get some food for random meals throughout the week, and rested the remainder of the night!

                Ryan liked downtown Charleston more than I did. I think I would have liked it more if it hadn’t been a holiday weekend. Maybe there were just too many people pressing in. But I am so glad we went, and I did have a lot of fun seeing the famous landmarks!