Charleston, SC

Can I say that my kids are great travelers?  Wow!  They are very pleasant in the car.  In fact, it's just lovely to hear them having conversations, giggling or their random comments on what they see as we're driving.  They are genuinely excited about the places we are going to visit and the things we plan to see.  So it should be!  I hope that doesn't go away.

We planned to meet my sister and my nephew along with her boyfriend and his kids in Charleston for the fourth of July.  I have been before, but it was just for an evening.  I thought it was such a great place that I wanted to go back and do it again and see more of it.  We were only there for three nights.

We hit the beach at the Isle of Palm.  This is where we met my sister and company.  I only get to see her and my nephew twice a year, sometimes three. 

This beach was crowded!  I guess this is to be expected when you are tourist on fourth July weekend, right?  Also, the tide was high when we got there and beach space was very tight.  I had five kids to look after amidst an ocean of people so I was constantly counting five little kids the few hours we were there.  The kids were having tons of fun.  They only see the beach once a year and this was it.  Well, I'm wrong - we did make a trip to Ocean City this year.

B didn't like the water too much.  She was just fine playing in the sand.

Coach took the kids into the water while I watched the kids on the beach.  The kids, who don't know how to swim, were having more fun with the waves this year.

E made droopy sandcastles.  The sand was soft at the beach.  I prefer that over the coarser sand.

P was looking for sharks - he might have found some if we stayed a bit longer.  My kids love sharks!  It's scary for me to imagine that sharks actually swim around in the shallows around sunset.  They were actually warning everyone about it as we arrived.  YIKES.

We were getting hungry and we were trying to decide when to leave so we could hit the Poe's Tavern restaurant on Sullivan's Island for lunch - a late lunch!  Coach teaches an American Literature class called, Poe/Hawthorne and we thought it would be fun to visit a restaurant inspired by Mr. Poe himself.  He spent some time on Sullivan's Island when he was stationed there while in the army.

Lunch was yummy and I was happy we were able to get seats and not wait for so long.  We planned on going downtown to walk through the market place.  I like that sort of thing.  It was very crowded and hot.  We had a lot of kids with us and I didn't really get to browse and really take a look at everything they had like I would have wanted to, it was ok.  Doing Seattle's market place was more fun, perhaps b/c I was without a lot of kids and the temperature was a lot colder =-)

We heard a lot about the water taxi that crosses the harbor.  We would be able to enjoy a leisurely ride and see lots of historical sights on the way.  Also, they said there were almost always dolphin sightings on a ride.  It sounded perfect!

Can you see the excitement in his eyes?  It a very nice time of day when we finally got on the water taxi - as the sun was going down.

We kept looking for those dolphins.

...and kept looking, but we saw other nice things on our ride.

We saw the USS Yorktown.  We didn't ever visit the actual ship, but it would have been cool!  The ship was so large. 

I loved the sun setting on the sailboats, so pretty!

 

We took a half hour ride and we never saw those dolphins, but we still had a good time seeing everything else.  We ended up asking the guys driving the boat where a good place to eat was.  We ended up going to a place called Pizzeria Di Giovanni.  This place had enormous size pizzas and it was so yummy!

By the end of the day, the kids were all teetered out.  We headed to our hotels after dinner to rest up for a day at Magnolia Plantation and fourth of July festivities!