Charleston Girl’s Trip

Hi, friends!

Last weekend I took a trip to Charleston, SC with my college roommates and it was an absolute BLAST! This is your excuse to book that trip with your girlfriends that you’ve been delaying. It was the best time catching up with friends. Anyone who is a parent knows how hard it is to have an uninterrupted conversation so having FOUR days without interruption felt like a luxury! I’ll be sharing all the activities and restaurants we ate at in this post.

We arrived Thursday evening and stayed in Mount Pleasant. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting that much of this town, but it was SO CUTE and had tons to do (for families included)! We had dinner locally at Mill Street Tavern. We ate outside and it was right on the water! Since we got in town later, it was mostly dark during out time there, so if you can I would recommend going before sunset because it would probably be so pretty! They had a great selection of drinks – I got the “Lavender Sunset” which was delicious! All of us got sushi and we all got different rolls. They were all so good! I had the “Spicy Tuna and Crispy Rice Cakes” and it was superb. I’m not always the biggest sushi fan, but this was the best sushi I have had!

Friday, we got an early start and went into Charleston for the morning. We took a Barre class at Barre3 with Jimmy. It was a Lady Gaga themed class and it was fire! He had awesome energy to get our morning started. It was definitely a tough class, though, so be prepared to sweat if you go. We stopped at a little coffee/pastry shop after our class and then continued to walk around downtown Charleston. We walked through the historic “Charleston City Market” where I grabbed a couple gifts for my kids and a super cute print from a shop called Perla Anne Press (Perla Anne Press Shop) She had so many adorable prints! Then we made our way to “Rainbow Row,” the French Quarter and saw the “Pineapple Fountain” in Joe Riley Waterfront Park, and then we walked through “The Battery” and all along the waterfront. We definitely got our steps in that morning! There were tons of things we didn’t see and there is SO much history to see even just walking. But if you wanted something more formal, they had guided walking tours as well as horse carriage tours.

We ate lunch back in Mount Pleasant at Page’s Okra Grill on their patio. It also had a great menu. I had a delicious Jalapeno Margarita, which hit the spot on a warm day after walking 7 miles through downtown and a Grill Mahi Mahi sandwich. Highly recommend!

We hung out back at the house before heading back down to Charleston for dinner. Mount Pleasant was so great because it was only about a 20-25 minute drive to the city and they had plenty of public parking, and coming from Chicago, for what I would consider a very reasonable price! We went to happy hour at The Rooftop, which has great views of the city. Then, we headed to 82 Queen for dinner, which was so absolutely FANTASTIC! Our waitress was amazing and gave great recommendations. We all altered what we were going to order because of her and not one of us was disappointed. I had their Fish and Grits which was *chefs kiss*!

Saturday we went to breakfast at the cutest little place called “Vintage Coffee.” It had tons of outdoor seating and even had a playground for kids. Very family friendly! It shares property with their sister restaurants “Coastal Pizza” and “Coastal Creamery” which open in the evening. We all had their Acai bowls which were delicious and extremely filling. Their coffee was really good, too! This stop was a MUST for me if you’re heading to Charleston area. After that we rode bikes provided by our AirBnB around Mount Pleasant and headed to Shem Creek Boardwalk. Let me just say, this was SO fun. I absolutely loved seeing the designs of all the homes there. Beautiful! I especially loved when homes made design choices to fit with the overall feel of SC – pastel doors, some beautiful brick homes mirroring the history of Charleston, and my favorite giant front porches! We spent the afternoon at Isle of Palms beach. They offered public parking and there was plenty of beach access. For all of us, this was probably the biggest letdown of the weekend. It wasn’t very warm and it was pretty windy so we didn’t stay at the beach for too long. They had a bunch of touristy shops with similar items, but honestly I would have recommended downtown Charleston more for your options for gifts. We grabbed some appetizers for a small lunch and headed back to Mount Pleasant. We ate an early dinner at “Coastal Crust” – we truly loved this spot so much we decided to head back for dinner. We missed out on Coastal Creamery before they sold out. Such a bummer! We had early bedtimes due to early flights the next morning, but we truly enjoyed our time there so much!