A Spring Trip to Charleston, SC

In 2020, my friend Lia and I got to talking and started dreaming up a trip to Charleston, SC. We put together details, planned it out, and booked our flights for June of 2021. Believe it or not, this was my first ever flight—I know, I know, crazy! I was excited (and nervous) but it was fun to try something new and to be going somewhere new with my best friend.

You may be wondering why I’m just now sharing this (I mean this was almost a year ago now) but it’s because my blog is finally up and running and because I’m just getting time to sit down and write this out…and because I enjoy having our trip documented because it’s fun to look back on and maybe this will give you an idea of some of the spots you want to hit on your own trip.

MONDAY

When we arrived in Charleston, we grabbed an Uber and headed to our hotel. We stayed at Hyatt Place Historic District and we loved it. It was central to a lot of locations and we were able to walk or bike around the city from here without any trouble. Once we changed, we decided to start walking around the city. As we walked, we took many photos but then realized maybe it was time to eat something so we grabbed our list of places we wanted to try and headed over to The Rise Coffee Bar. It was not only yummy but so aesthetically pleasing. We continued to walk around after refueling and enjoyed the bright colors of the city and we also decided to head to Historic Charleston City Market. I believe we walked at least 6 miles on Monday.

For dinner, we stopped at Felix and it did not disappoint! It was only about a 1-minute walk away from the hotel so we were able to enjoy our food and head back to rest after dinner if we wanted. But, we didn’t want to head back yet so after dinner we walked around again and grabbed some ice cream from Jeni’s. I am pretty boring when it comes to ice cream flavors so when they didn’t have any of my “usuals” I decided to get Strawberry and it was so delicious. And once again, we had found another aesthetic (but also delicious) location in Charleston. 

TUESDAY

This was our big day of exploring Charleston—I look back at the photos and almost can’t believe all we did in one day. This was by far my favorite day of our trip…let’s just say that it started really good with breakfast at Miller’s All Day. I still think about their breakfast and my mouth water when I see pictures of it. If I go back to Charleston, it will be so I can go to Miller’s again for breakfast (among many other reasons). 

We grabbed bikes to ride around the city through Holy Spokes. After breakfast, we biked around for a bit, found Rainbow Row, and then headed to the Battery. We spent some time here before heading to Clerks Coffee Company for some refreshments. After grabbing something to eat and drink, we hopped back on our bikes to go sit at one of our favorite spots, the Charleston Pier Swings. After cooling off, we hopped back on our bikes again before heading back to the hotel before dinner. By the time dinner came about, we wanted something that was lighter and a little more refreshing so we headed to Beech for poke bowls and smoothies. Our day ended after this as it had been a busy day of exploring all that Charleston had to offer!

WEDNESDAY

We had plans later to go to Mount Pleasant so we spent the morning in Charleston. Lia had found a cute bakeshop that we wanted to visit so that was our first stop of the day. We arrived at Sugar Bake Shop and it was not only adorable but their cupcakes were delicious! We wandered around doing some window shopping and for lunch stopped once again at Beech for a poke bowl and acai bowl (safe to say we really liked this place). After lunch, we caught an Uber to Mount Pleasant. Our first stop was Vintage Coffee Cafe before heading to Shem Creek. We walked around the waterfront for a little and enjoyed the views before we started to hear some thunder in the distance. We decided that we were going to walk back towards the cafe and then settled at Coastal Crust for dinner. I love pizza so this was what I was waiting for all week and it did not disappoint. It started to rain while we were there which is the beginning of our story for that night.

We were going to grab an Uber home after eating but there were none available (it was like peak dinner time so they were all busy). We decided to wait it out but nothing was showing up–we may have stayed at Coastal Crust for up to an additional hour waiting. It was still raining at this point but it wasn’t too bad so we decided to start walking closer to Shem Creek and the bridge to see if we could get an Uber from there. Well, there was none so we kept walking. We thought maybe we’d have to cross the bridge over the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge just to get back (we weren’t actually going to…but it did cross our minds when nothing was coming up on Uber or Lyft). We found a Baskin Robbins and grabbed ice cream there. There was a fire truck there and we also considered for a quick moment just to ask for a ride back. Finally, an Uber became available and we were pretty wet but headed back to the hotel (thankfully!).

THURSDAY

Our flight was set to leave in the afternoon on Thursday so we took advantage of our last morning and headed back to Miller’s All Day for breakfast before heading out. We once again walked to Miller’s…with all our luggage this time though. We got to the airport after breakfast with enough time to check-in and wait for our flight. Little did we know that we’d be at the airport for almost 6 hours with 2-3 delays but we finally made it home that night. It was a trip to remember and I even got to see the sunset and city lights at night in the air due to our flight being delayed so all in all, it was a great trip.