Charleston Weekend!

Hi Friends!  Patrick and I are safely back from our road trip weekend to Charleston, and other than the fact that we are exhausted, it’s nice to be home and sleeping in our own bed.  As you will see in the details below, we ate better (and more unhealthy) food than we have in a long time, and it’s back on the Weigh Watchers/workout train starting TODAY!  Here’s a litte info on the first couple of days of the trip.

Wednesday – After Patrick got off work for the week (and I got my car back from some minor maintenance that needed attention before the journey) we were off to Knoxville to visit with my parents and Sweet Zoey, who has been vacationing with my parents for the last week or so.  We stopped in Cookeville at Blue Coast Burrito (my fav “build your own burrito place”) for dinner.  Nothing too exciting here…just some good visiting with the fam. 

Thursday – After leaving Knoxville a little later than we planned, we were finally on our way to Charleston.  Our first stop for lunch, though, was in Spartanburg at a famous burger joint, the Beacon Drive In.  I’ll be honest with you…neither of us were very impressed.  The burger was just okay, and even though there were more fries and onion rings than the 2 of us could even pretend to eat, it was really just too greasy.  Also, as I told Patrick, I don’t mind eating in whole-in-the-wall run-down restaurants; however, I expect the food to be delicious at these establishments!  At this place, the food was just okay…and the place was extremely run down!  Moral of the story, it was good for Patrick to get to eat at a famous burger joint…however, next time you are driving through Spartanburg, feel free to skip this place!  We did however, get a couple of good pics!

After arriving in Charleston, we went straight to our hotel to check in.  We stayed at The Inn at I’on, a Bed and Breakfast in Mt. Pleasant (a suburb of Charleston).  If you are traveling to Charleston for a weekend, I highly recommend this B&B.  Not only was our room quaint and exactly what you would expect out of a B&B, but the included breakfast was at an amazing world renowned restaurant, the drive into downtown Charleston only took about 10 minutes, and the price was about half of the places we looked at in Charleston that weren’t nearly as nice.  Here are a few pics:

We also had a cute courtyard right outside our room:

After getting checked into our room, it was time to head downtown for some fun.  Our first stop was at Pearlz Oyster Bar for happy hour, where we enjoyed their special happy hour menu of really delicious (and reasonably priced) oysters on the half shell and homemade blue cheese chips.  Yummy!  They also had some excellent drink specials including the oyster shooters seen below.  I also had some habanero type martini drink that was really delicious, too!

Here’s a pic of my beau and I enjoying the people watching and relaxation while patiently waiting on our oysters to arrive.

Next up, we decided to take a walk over to Waterfront Park.  If you ever visit Charleston, this is a must see!  It’s so beautiful and peaceful here.  There are huge swings to relax in and the water is gorgeous!  The weather was beautiful on Thursday afternoon and even though the sun was setting when we were there, it really wasn’t even cold!

Our next stop was to The Gin Joint, which was another happy hour place that my beau picked out.  If you haven’t noticed, he does some serious research when we take trips…This place was sort of similar to a few places here in Nashville.  However, it was still nice to sit out on the patio and have a drink.  I got my stand-by, which is a dirty martini, extra dirty.

To round out the evening, Patrick had made us reservations at a local restaurant called Cru Café.  It was such a nice dinner.  We sat out on the patio, which was beautiful, and the food was delicious.  I got the grilled shrimp and angel hair pasta with fresh mozzarella and spicy marinara, which was really yummy, and Patrick got the Thai seafood risotto with coconut milk, soy, sriracha, basil and carnaroli rice.  I dare say it, but his was even better than mine.  We rounded out the evening with their famous bread pudding, which was To. Die. For.

That rounds out days 1 and 2.  Stay tuned tomorrow for our Friday in Charleston!