Southern Charmers – Part 1

“I’d love to go to Charleston, I’ve always wanted to go!” my cousin Nicole texted as I told her I was booking my flight for Memorial Day Weekend. My other cousins and I had ventured down to Cozumel in January during Martin Luther King Jr week and Nicole had to work and couldn’t make the trip, so this sounded like a great replacement. Something about Charleston always pulls you back, from the perfectly warm weather, the beaches, history and Victorian houses, seafood, nightlife, money and on and on and on. Personally, for me, that is where my favorite author of all-time, Pat Conroy, described in his book “The Lords of Discipline” for which I credit as my favorite book of all-time and the inspiration for what made me decide to be an English major with the creative writing track.

Pat’s description of Charleston stemmed from him being a student-athlete playing basketball at The Citadel. I had a calling to get there 12 years ago to walk the campus (even though it’s moved to a new campus since the time he was attending the school). I took a picture next to the huge junior class ring that stands like a monument adjacent to the large grass quad. Every young male in Charleston is expected to attend The Citadel and represent the state and the country in this military school that forms discipline and honor. Pat was ex-communicated for a very long time after his book came out as the school didn’t think they were portrayed in a true light, but Pat was never one to back away from truth in his novels as his English teacher in high school always told him that the best author’s hold nothing back, as that creates truly great storytelling, you must NEVER hold anything back. This would haunt Pat for many years with his family and portray them in a truthful, but not elegant light and they resented him for it. But, this is all another story, however anxious to return with my cousin that had been the birthplace of my inspiration, but for her, it was her first time and I could see it anew through her eyes.

The morning of May 22 arrived and we were on our way. We made a quick layover in Chicago Midway and then boarded the Southwest flight to Charleston. The original plan was to stay in a hotel downtown in Historic Charleston at the Hyatt Home Hotel and be able to walk to all the bars from the Bravo TV reality show Southern Charm. We both had been watching the show for seven years and were anxious to hit all the nightlife spots and possibly hang with some of the cast while out and about.

After we landed and got an Uber to the Hyatt House Hotel in Downtown Charleston, the front desk attendant started laughing when I gave him my reservation info. He said I was booked across town in Mt Pleasant at the Hyatt House Hotel there. I had reserved the hotel through my new Amex Platinum card and wanted to try using the perks on this trip. Well, 0-1 on this one. I called Amex and they reminded me that I had paid an un-refundable reservation in advance and they would have to call the Mt Pleasant hotel to see if they would refund the money. I waited for her to call and cancel the reservation, however, when I then tried to reserve at the hotel they were at, they were 100% booked solid. So, now I was without the reservation in Mt Pleasant at the Hyatt there and there were not reservations at the Hyatt House Hotel I was standing at. While the Amex customer service rep was getting frustrated with me, rightfully so, I asked if she could call and rebook the reservation in Mt Pleasant since all the hotels downtown were twice the cost. She was able to get them to keep my reservation since it hadn’t changed in their system yet and we called an Uber and off we were 15 minutes to the east in the Johnson County version of the Charleston metro, Mt Pleasant.

Our Uber driver on the way was an interesting fella. Ready to move from the USA due to high-rising costs and his plan was to save money to leave to Thailand. He had never been there and didn’t know much about it, other than he thought it was cheaper. I told him to look at Belize since it’s closer in case he needed to get him for anything, such as healthcare, and a lot of American retirees are retiring there and they take the American dollar as currency and English is the official language. He asked if that was a city or a country. So, our geography wizard Uber driver typed the name into his phone will be doing some research on the country I visited last year and received my SCUBA certification and had the time of my life. I think he’ll do ok down there. One life changed in less than a day.

After checking in to our new Hyatt Home Hotel, we were away from most everything but closer to a couple beaches, both Sullivan’s Island Beach and Isle of Palms. Our Uber driver said we should probably hit a beach on Thursday before the weekend and then do any downtown activities on Friday while people were at the beach. Most Charleston folks and visitors head to Folly Beach, that is the party beach with more bars and restaurants, but much more crowded and harder to get Uber’s on the way home since it’s so congested. We planned on hitting Isle of Palms the next morning. In the meantime, we were ready to eat our arms off of our bodies since we were on planes all day and no real food. We had to Uber everywhere since not much was in walking distance of our hotel. You’re welcome, Nicole.

The first stop was to Shem Creek. This creek was the location of many scenes from the Netflix TV series Outer Banks that I was really excited to see. I love that series and needed to see this. There are many bars and restaurants that line up and down this creek and yachts and small boats dock at the bars with marshes all around. They have such restaurants as Water’s Edge (that has a really nice hotel right next to it), and then on the other side is Tavern and Table, Red’s Iced House and Saltwater Cowboy. We were dropped off at Water’s Edge, but the outdoor patio didn’t open until 4p and it was 3p.

Water’s Edge is to the right in this pic

So we walked the bridge across to Tavern and Table and agreed to order some apps until 4p when Water’s Edge patio opened for dinner. Tavern and Table in pic below with standup paddleboarding folks on Shem Creek.

The oysters were tremendous as were the bang bang shrimp. Welcome to Charleston. Delicious.

Once it was 4p, we headed across the bridge again back to Water’s Edge. We got a patio seat overlooking Shem Creek on a balcony seat and had some amazing pasta salmon and shrimp. We also had to throw in our honorary espresso martini. Shoutout to my other cousin Janelle that was throwing the down like Tic-Tac’s on our Cozumel trip all week. Here’s to you, Janelle, thanks for starting the trend and we’ll keep it alive and well for ya.

While chilling at sunset, some live music started up to our right in the bar area of the hotel. Perfect night cap to a busy travel day but the wakeup call at 2:15a Central Time was wearing on us. Time to Uber back, grab some sleep and wake up and hit Isle of Palms Beach.

Isle of Palms is where Shep lives from the Bravo TV reality show Southern Charm. He’s got a beach house and I’d seen various scenes of how quiet and relaxing it can be there. In the morning I called a company to have our umbrella and chairs setup on the beach so that when we got there, we could just start the relaxation. It was only $44 for the entire day and I called at 9a and they had it ready by 10:30a on the beach with my name on it and called when it was ready. Heading to the beach on a Thursday was a tremendous idea already. Fantastic decision.

Before hitting the beach, however, I looked up a close breakfast cafe in walking distance of where our beach access point was at Coconut Joe’s. I found the Seabiscuit Cafe and it was the perfect place. Such a great idea to Uber as well as parking is at a premium around the beach, especially around the holiday. We walked right on over and got a seat outside.

Perfect breakfast morning view with our coffee and birds flying around. They love picking food off your plate if you leave it unattended for too long. One bird flew in and stole Nicole’s bread.

A quick 3-4 min walk down and around the corner and it was the main street of Isle of Palms. Filled with your typical beach stores and small restaurants and bars. I would much rather go here than Folly Beach where the tourists line the streets.

Here was our beach access point that was just to the right of the pic above.

We walked around for a couple of minutes and found our umbrella and chairs. After about 30 min we decided to have them move us closer to the water instead of the back area behind other umbrella’s. They gladly moved us over after going to grab their drill. This truly is the way to go.

The rest of the day time of our first full day was spent taking in the sun, relaxing, reading, listening to music from my portable speaker to some Stick Figure (always) and looking forward to dinner reservations that night at NICO Oysters and Seafood Bar. NICO was a former Pizza Hut building that was transformed near Shem Creek by one of the women on the Bravo Reality TV Show’s family. It was Naomie Olindo’s dad that started up the restaurant after moving the family from France many years ago. He owned a bunch of restaurants in France prior moving to Charleston and they also own Saltwater Cowboy that is a restaurant/bar on Shem Creek with vary different vibes. That is more a college-type hangout with amazing rooftop views of the creek. NICO is much more upscale and classy with an patio on the side that is covered with another bar. I’ll go into that restaurant in my next post, but wanted to kick things back off with my travel blog again since it’s been wayyyyy too long! Until the second post of Charleston on the night of day 2, cheers!