Five Must-See Sites in Historic Charleston

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and The Coca-Cola Company. All opinions are mine alone. #DASANISparkling #FlavorContest #CollectiveBias

I always love getting questions from friends and readers who are visiting Charleston: Where should I go? Is Charleston walkable? How can I make the most of a weekend trip?  I've rounded up  list of my five favorite sites that comprise the perfect walk around the Holy City and took the adventure myself with my favorite go-to beverage, DASANI® Sparkling, to share everything with you!

Stop #1: Charleston City Market - The historic market has been around for more than 300 years, along four blocks in the heart of downtown Charleston.  Everyday, artisans set up booths filled with handmade sweetgrass baskets, jewelry, candles, paintings, photographs, and souvenirs for tourists to bring back home.

Before heading out to the market, I shopped at my local Harris Teeter to stock up on DASANI® Sparkling.  They have such a wide variety of flavors, my favorites right now being the White Peach and Pear Kiwi.  You can shop for DASANI® Sparkling at a Kroger store near you!

Stop #2: Pineapple Fountain - After turning down East Bay Street and onto Vendue Range, Waterfront Park greets you just before the harbor.  Exactly what you would picture, this fountain is definitely one of the most photographed spots in the city!

Stop #3: Rainbow Row - Don't forget to enjoy all of Waterfront Park before walking south to one of the wharfs back out to East Bay Street.  You cannot miss Rainbow Row with its bright colors!  Located between 79 and 107 East Bay Street, these Georgian Row houses are the longest of their kind.  They've been painted their pastel colors since the 1920s and are often repainted to keep them as vibrant as can be!

While I'm walking down to Tradd Street for the next stop on my own adventure, DASANI® Sparkling wants to join you on your next adventure.  Speaking of adventure, October 1st through November 15th, you can enter for a chance to WIN an experiential trip to Albuquerque, NM for the 2019 Albuquerque International Hot Air Balloon Festival!

   1. Take a pic of your favorite flavor of DASANI® Sparkling 

   2. Post it to Instagram or Twitter using #DasaniSparkling AND #FlavorContest 

The Grand Prize winner will win a trip to the 2019 Albuquerque International Hot Air Balloon Festival in October 2019 for the winner plus 3 guests! The prize package consists of round trip, coach-class air transportation for 4 from a major airport near the winner’s home; 3 nights' accommodations; rental car; 2 Gondola Club passes (2-day passes) to the Festival; a hot air balloon ride for winner and 1 guest; $1,000 spending money; and travel agent services. 

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.  Legal residents of certain U.S. states and D.C., 18 years or older.  Ends 11/15/18.For rules, hashtags, alternate methods of entry, odds, prize and complete details, click here.  Void in CT, FL, IA, ME, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NY, ND, OK, PA, SD, and VT and where prohibited.

Stop #4: Church and Water streets - Zig-zagging down Tradd and Church streets, one of my favorite corners in Charleston is Church and Water.  There is the most Charlestonesque courtyard with a brick-lined street and some very Instagrammable spots.  If you follow any Charleston bloggers, you might recognize those shrub-lined steps on Church Street - make sure you take your own photo!

Stop #4: Church and Water streets - Last but not least, a walk back up Meeting Street and west on Tradd is absolutely necessary if you want to see some of my favorite homes, window boxes, shutters, doors, and door knockers in the city.  Make sure you walk all the way down to #126 to see the famous lion door knocker on the perfect peach door!

Have you been to Charleston before?  Did I hit your favorite spot?

Going with the Flo(rence)

I am thrilled to say that we have weathered Hurricane Florence.   This time last week, we really thought that there would be a Cat 3 or 4 direct hit to the Carolinas, with a storm 1000 miles wide.  Schools cancelled, starting on Tuesday, mandatory evacuation orders were made, and the state reversed the highway to get as many people out as possible.  Since the storm wasn't expected to hit until Thursday, we decided to wait it out a bit but still prepare.  This was the slowest moving hurricane ever, and with every 3-hour update, it was tracking more and more north, away from us.  There are a lot of people in and around Charleston saying that the governor took too many precautions too early, but really, they gave us 48 hours from its expected arrival, and I appreciate them really taking it seriously. 

Well, it took an extra full day, until Friday, to hit in North Carolina, and all of my prayers go out to our neighbors to the north.  At landfall, the storm was moving at 2 mph, so it has been raining and raining near Myrtle Beach and north.

By Wednesday afternoon, we were going pretty stir crazy, so a few of us took a walk downtown to see what everything looked like and get some fresh air.  Honestly, you could tell that people already knew it was most likely going to slide north because there wasn't nearly as much prep as there was before Matthew or Irma.  

Before the storm got here on Friday, we even set up a little impromptu kickball game because all scheduled sports were cancelled due to the evacuation. 

Over the long weekend, we ate a lot of food, played a lot of cards and Mario Kart, and even braved the storm for some rain tennis when we couldn't sit inside anymore.  We got truly lucky with this storm.  We were fully prepared for the worst, had our hurricane shutters up, and were prepared to leave if need be.  Again, prayers to North Carolina as they begin to recover, and if you would like to make a donation to relief efforts, here is the link to Michael Jordan's NBA Cares website, where you can choose a variety of charities from which to donate.

Fudgie the Adventure

First of all, I want to thank all of you for your sweet words on Monday's post about life lately and writer's block.  I also wanted to say that I apologize for not responding to comments in... forever.  I realized that Google updated some settings, and it should be back working now!

If you follow me on Instagram, I already posted a little about this adventure from our trip up North, but I thought it deserved its own blog post.  So here's the back story: earlier in the summer, one of my fellow Rhode Islanders living in Charleston shared a post on social media with me about a collaboration between Carvel and a brewery in New York, Captain Lawrence.  Who else grew up with Carvel?!  I really thought it was only a Northeast thing (because we don't have any locations in Charleston), but apparently it's everywhere!  Carvel ice cream cakes were a staple of parties when I was little, and Fudgie the Whale is definitely the most well-known character. 

So, when we heard that Fudgie the Beer's final pre-sale was happening in July (the initial cannings sold out immediately!) and that pick-up would be during the week we were up North, I jumped on ordering a 4-pack.  To be 100% honest, stouts aren't my favorite style of beer, but OF COURSE I had to place an order.

Our friends who were the first to get married while we were up here had left their dog with his parents after the wedding.  On the day we decided to pick up our beer, we drove their dog back to New Jersey, and our friends agreed to go on our Fudgie adventure with us!  As a joke, Mike asked where the closest Carvel location was to the brewery.  Laughing (and thinking it would be at least a half hour away), I searched it, and learned that there was one 0.3 miles down the street from the brewery.  He INSISTED that we needed a cake for our beer, and I do not say no to ice cream cake.

So, on our way to the brewery on Friday afternoon, we picked up a Fudgie.  We thought that "Cheers" was the perfect slogan to go on the cake, and we were off!

Fudgie the Beer was just one of a few cans they had for sale that day, and they also had 15+ beers on tap to try, too.  We picked up our cans as well as a few pints to drink on-site.  Captain Lawrence has an awesome outdoor beer garden and a full menu of food.

 We may have broken a little rule by drinking the Fudgie at the brewery (typically cans sold at breweries are for at-home consumption only), but I didn't see an explicit sign saying I couldn't, so we did a taste test of cake alongside the beer.

Like I said, stout is not my favorite, but this was the perfect pairing for the cake.  It's brewed with Carvel chocolate crunchies, fudge, and ice cream, and is a great summer beer at only 6% alcohol (lower than a lot of stouts I've had).  You can definitely taste the cocoa in the beer as well as a roasted finish from the crunchies. 

Besides splitting the beer, we also absolutely housed the Fudgie cake.  The package says that it's made for 6-12 people, but the 4 of us did some serious damage.  We didn't feel like buying plates, so spoons right into the cake it was! 

From there, we headed to a couple more breweries in New York, and I'll be sharing more about those in my summer brewery review next week! 

What's been your most spontaneous adventure this summer??

Weekend (and Week and Life) Update

Happy Monday, friends. I'm back from a week-long trip to the Northeast where we watched friends get married and spent time with all of our family. As I may have mentioned, we are going to 6 weddings this year (invited to a 7th early in the year we couldn't attend), and it's been a whirlwind. This time, we had back-to-back weddings in New Jersey and Connecticut, so we figured we would just stay up there in between to work remotely and visit with friends and family. We have only really spent longer periods of time up there in the winter, recently, so it was nice to have summer weather to play golf, visit the beach, and eat all my favorite seasonal (sea)food that closes up shop in the winter. 

It was also nice just to take a step back. It hit me on Sunday night that I didn't have any content planned to publish on Monday. We had a 7:00am tee time to play golf with my dad, and to be honest, I valued sleep over throwing out a post. It's the first time in a long time I've done that. I've been procrastinating writing recently, to the point where I'll stay up past midnight to get a post up that I just didn't want to write. I think that should tell me that the passion just isn't there like it used to be.

Throughout last week, I kept telling myself that I would write something, but I let it fall to the back-burner. Honestly, it really felt good.  I still love the photography and curating side of blogging, though. I took so. many. photos. this week of amazing places we went, things we ate, people we visited, and I'm hoping some new inspiration will get my gears turning.

I really don't want to give up this blog, but I have had the most terrible writer's block recently. I feel like I'm out of ideas. So I guess I'll turn to you, if you made it all the way through this post that went from originally being a week recap to a vent session (I applaud you and) I would love to know what you enjoy reading. Recipes, DIYs, Charleston must-dos, Charleston restaurant favorites, travel tips, what I'm shopping for, fashion?

Well, now I leave you with a couple photos from the last week and will be back on Wednesday (promise, this time!) to start sharing a whole bunch of adventures from last week's trip.

June In Review

Happy Friday!  Who else is totally thrown off that today is Friday?  Don't get me wrong, having a day off in the middle of the week is phenomenal, but yesterday I thought it was Monday all. day.  Now it's already Friday - sweet!  It's already another new month, and I've enjoyed doing monthly round-ups through the beginning of this year.  While I love to share personal events on the blog, updating on "life" once per month allows for more time for recipes, DIYs, and Charleston favorites.  So, here's what I was up to throughout June:

We started the month in Boston for the wedding of one of Mike's closest friends.  They were the most beautiful couple, and oh my gosh, how cute was their cake?!  We also enjoyed beer, donuts, and lots of pretty spring flowers!

The following weekend was spent outside, at a new golf course and on the water.  That one was so good that it did get its own review, and you can read all about it here.

We went on a date night last month to one of our favorite breweries, Snafu (this is the place to go in Charleston, if you like sours!), and ate Mexican food and played mini golf afterwards.

We finished another regular season of kickball.  Our two competitive teams are in the playoffs, and our non-competitive team of new-to-kickball neighborhood friends (pictured below) finished with a winning record!

Speaking of the neighborhood, the storm-watching last month was awesome!  We sat up on the porch and enjoyed a ton of storms.  I even captured some lightning on photo!

Overall, June was as hot as ever, and in between thunderstorms, we absolutely made the most of it.  So far, July is off to a great start, too, and I can't wait to see what else is in store.  Have a great weekend!