Chahhhhhleston

That's Charleston for all y'all non-Southern folks :)

While my mom was here, we decided to take a little trip down to Charleston for a few days. It's about 4 hours away and neither of us had ever been. We spent last Wednesday evening scouring the Internet for hotels and ideas about what to do there. There really is SO much to do, we had to pick and choose what we wanted to do the most.

{Unfortunately, the weather was really hot and humid (something I'm more used to, but my mom is not) and it really got in the way of a lot of the things we would have liked to do. }

Thursday after gymnastics, we loaded up the car and headed South. The drive was very easy and Jax did a great job. We checked into the hotel just before dinnertime, then headed downtown to find a place to eat. We had planned on checking out a restaurant that had gotten some great reviews... but their AC was broken and it was miserable in there! We decided to wander a little and we came across this little gem, Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Que. It was AMAZING!

(I couldn't get a good picture of the little wiggle worm :) )

I am so glad that we ended up there instead of the first place!

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel because we had promised Jax that we could go swimming in the "heated" indoor pool. Apparently heated just means room temperature-ish, because the pool was not very warm! After that, we headed back to the room to try to get some sleep (which is hard when sharing a bed with a 2 year old).

The next day, we headed to Boone Hall Plantation.

It's considered to be the most photographed plantation in the US.

Parts of The Notebook were filmed there! (Side note- we came home and had to watch the movie, of course. The plantation was used for the outside shots of Alli's family's summer house. It was fun to compare the movie with the pictures that we have!)

After the plantation, we found a place close by to eat lunch. Then we jumped in the car to drive to the oldest living thing east of the Rockies, the Angel Oak Tree. It was about 30 minutes away and we knew it would be perfect for Jax to be able to get a quick nap. The tree was HUGE, and the limbs had to be supported because they were draping all the way down to the ground. It was beautiful!

We left the tree and headed back to downtown to go to the Children's Museum of the Lowcountry. It's bigger than our kid's museum and Jax had a lot of fun!

We went from the museum to go eat dinner at Jestine's Kitchen. It's famous for having Rachael Ray eat there on her show $40 A Day. Anthony Bourdain has also eaten there. I have to say, I wasn't super impressed. We got the "famous" meatloaf, and it wasn't good at all. The sides were better, and the mac n cheese was delish! They did have good desserts, but overall we were kinda disappointed.

After dinner, we wandered over to the ocean and walked up and down some paths lining the waterfront. We also let Jax play in this water fountain.

He LOVED it!

The next day, we went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Obviously not a local restaurant, but it's always so yummy and it was close to the hotel!

We packed up, checked out of the hotel, then headed to the South Carolina Aquarium. The tickets were pricey, plus you have to pay for kids older than 1, so we had really been debating about going. We ended up deciding to check it out. When got there, I asked if it was really necessary to pay for my 2-year-old. They ended up letting Jax in for free! I was so glad they did because it was a bit of a disappointment. We are used to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and this one was much smaller and had fewer exhibits. It was still fun to look at all the pretty fish!

Overall, Jax had fun and it was a good way to end our wonderful time in Charleston!

PS- Half of the pictures are from the camera, and the other half are from my phone... sorry about the blurriness/coloring in those ones!