Visiting Charleston, SC has always been one of my favorite things to do any time of year, however this year it was a little different. Due to the pandemic and also riots that had been happening before our trip, this go round was a little off.

We absolutely love to travel. In fact, last year (good ol’ 2019 when the world was semi-right) I started planning us a BIG trip to Italy for 2020. Like even bought us new luggage on Black Friday (also a thing of the past apparently?). I researched and monitored prices and planned itineraries and read blogs about traveling to Italy. My plan was 100% to be in Italy around this time this year.

But alas, you know what they say about the best laid plans…

Surprisingly, COVID is not what stopped our Italy planning. Our home build is. I was worried about having enough money in our contingency fund (ha!) and the downpayment. When I started planning our trip we hadn’t bought our property yet and we still *sort of* thought we would stay in the camper another 8 months or so before we even looked at property.

But then my family (we’re living in their backyard), two dogs, four cats, me and Ethan in a camper just about drove us nuts. So we started looking, found our land, started building, and vacation got pushed to the back burner. Which clearly I am not very grateful for since we would not be in Italy even if I had planned our dream vacay and parted ways with thousands of dollars (since I’ve done enough of that recently).

Anyways that was an extremely long side story to bring you to the point of this post.

I still wanted to do something fun for Ethan’s birthday in June. Camper living is fine and dandy, but we were itching to sleep in a REAL (big) bed. We both love the beach. It’s our happy place, so I started searching around in May when things started loosening up here in South Carolina for a quick getaway. (And no I didn’t even consider Dirty Myrtle, we’re too old for that ya’ll.)

Charleston is a place we both love. It’s a short car ride (about 3 1/2 hours). And I spent many weekend and summers there since my dad lived there for part of my childhood. There are several beaches to choose from, plus downtown just gives you this nostalgic feeling like everything is amazing and incredible.

Or at least that’s how Charleston has always made me feel until this trip.

In hindsight maybe I should have known this trip would be different with the happenings in the world. (But if you don’t know I try to live in a bubble as much as possible to maintain my inner peace.)

So I originally planned to only go for one night, but then I started feeling bad that we wouldn’t get a true “whole” beach day. So I decided to book a less expensive hotel in North Charleston for Friday and then switch to the hotel in downtown Saturday that I had already booked.

Day 1:

We got up fairly early and were on the road by 7:30ish? Anyways early. We made one terrible stop at the Chick-fil-a in Orangeburg to get breakfast. The food wasn’t terrible, but we literally sat in that line for 30 minutes for BREAKFAST. Plus no one said “my pleasure”. Get it together Organeburg Chick-fil-a. Just kidding, we probably just hit them at an off time.

We made it to Charleston and headed straight to IOP (Isle of Palms). Yes this is probably the most “touristy” beach in Charleston, but it’s beautiful and has amenities like easy access parking, bathrooms, showers, and a good selection of restaurants right off the beach.

The smell of the marsh and ocean are my absolute favorite. That salty air makes me tingly and I’m so freaking excited when we turn onto the main road that leads right to the state park where we planned to park at the beach.

Our excitement was deflated a little however when we turned onto this road to see HUGE FLASHING DOT signs that read “NO ALCOHOL ON BEACHES”.

Say what?

If I can’t sip my White Claw while working on my tan WHAT IS THE POINT EVEN. (Sigh, first world problems.)

I thought on my feet though (well really my butt, I was in the car) and took a smart tip from one of my co-workers who hides her White Claws from her kid in Yeti cups!

There is a Target right on your way to the beach conveniently. We needed to pick up some chairs anyways because maybe we have beach chairs somewhere, but living in a camper and having all your non-essentials in a storage unit 30 minutes from said camper causes you to sometimes give up and spend unnecessary money.

We hit up Target for our chairs and also some knock off big Yeti cups! Yes, knock off. I give in to spending money sometimes, but not on name brand crap. We also got cute matching straws!

These ended up working perfectly. And I would like to add we were certainly not the most blatant people still drinking on the beach. I see you red solo cup group pulling liquor bottles out of the cooler.

Anyways, there were showers on and off this whole day, but nothing that was too bad and we never left the beach!

We packed up early afternoon and headed to check in to the SpringHill Suites by Marriott . Like I said this was in North Charleston, about 20-30 minutes to the beach and downtown depending on traffic. But it is conveniently located near a mall and also lots of restaurants!

This hotel was incredible.

The check-in was so easy. They were so friendly. It was very clean and the hotel room was SO COLD when we checked in! This was a plus because we were both hot, sticky, and sweaty from the beach. They didn’t even judge us when we walked in looking like bums trailing sand.

We showered, had a few drinks in the room while lounging on the big king sized fluffiest bed ever, and then headed out to the mall (I “NEEDED” some new clothes).

The mall was pretty chill. At this point masks hadn’t been mandated for customers (beginning of June), there were social distancing guidelines in place for lines etc, but it was a mostly normal shopping trip.

At this point I was starving so we decided to go somewhere close by. Plus we both wanted to go chill in the nice hotel bed. We stopped at Carrabba’s because there didn’t look to be a wait.

I know this will make me sound uncultured AF, but I’ve never been to Carrabba’s. I can’t really give you an explanation for this, but I haven’t.

Once inside, we realized they were running on a limited menu. On which there was nothing I ate. Like maybe on the kids menu? So we ended up leaving to look for another resturant.

Which lead us to Wild Wings! Yes, there is a Wild Wing’s where we live and yes that’s super boring, but they have food and beer and the wait was minimal. It was delicious and we were both happy. Then we headed back to the hotel for a night of relaxation watching TV!

Day 2:

We woke up super rested and refreshed (I love cold hotel rooms!). Put our bathing suits back on, grabbed some continental breakfast, packed up and headed back to the beach!

Quick side story here – I almost ALWAYS try to book hotels that offer continental breakfast, not only does it save money, but I feel like I’m getting more for my money with a “free” breakfast. I realize this is probably in my head and Ethan gets kind of annoyed when I won’t book a hotel because of no free breakfast, but hey, I’m just trying to be frugal!

Second side story – because of the pandemic I had read that many hotels had stopped offering breakfast all together. This was actually the one thing I asked at check-in and to my surprise she said they actually were having it! The breakfast was not a normal continental breakfast where there are waffle makers and eggs and breakfast meats. It was mostly prepackaged items like muffins and cereal, but it worked and it was a nice surprise!

We decided to go back to IOP since it’s just so convenient.

Plus we wanted to try out one of the restaurants since they were open with limited seating!

Since it was Saturday the beach actually got fairly crowded, but it was a beautiful day. We spent the morning lounging around, cooling off in the ocean and just talking and hanging out. It was so nice not to have an agenda or plan and just be able to really BE with each other.

Late afternoon we decided to head to a beach side restaurant for a light lunch. We had been snacking most of the morning on the beach and didn’t want to hit the “lunch” crowd anyways, but that didn’t really work out!

Since the restaurants were still at half capacity most of the ones right near the Isle Of Palms County Park where we were parked at had a wait. One place even told us an hour and a half! Yikes!

We settled on Papi’s Taqueria because they had the shortest wait and they were allowing you to purchase drinks from the bar and wait on the sidewalk outside the restaurant with your drinks!

They told us thirty minutes, but it was actually only about fifteen which was perfect! We were sat on the rooftop deck where you didn’t have a “server”, you walked up to the counter and ordered everything from there. They severed you your drinks immediately while you were standing there, but they did bring your food to your table. They had nice shade and fans setup so it wasn’t too hot.

It was a super great beachy vibe, and Ethan’s favorite food is tacos so it was perfect! I got a cheese quesadilla off the kid’s menu, which weirdly came with fries. Those fries were delicious let me tell you! Ethan said his tacos were on point too. The whole experience was pretty awesome and I would highly recommend it if you’re in the area!

Also – sorry I suck at getting pictures, so I literally have not one single picture of any of our food from this weekend!

Then we headed back to the beach for the rest of the afternoon!

Our hotel for Saturday night was the Courtyard Charleston Historic District in downtown Charleston, SC.

We arrived right around 4:00PM which was check-in time (or maybe it was 3:00PM, I can’t really remember, but the point is we got there relatively early in the afternoon). I wanted to love this hotel. I was so incredibly excited because it was in downtown, reasonably priced, and was supposed to be super nice! Check-in, however, left a relatively bad taste in my mouth and it went downhill from there.

First, I know we’re in downtown Charleston now, but we can’t be the only people who want to go to the beach and stay in downtown. It was very clear that the staff and other guests were not pleased with our beach attired and us smelling like the ocean surf. They didn’t really try to hide their displeasure either.

After waiting in line for probably at least ten minutes because at check-in time they only had ONE person working the desk I was super friendly to the lady who was helping get everyone checked in. I was mostly met with cold disregard however.

She then proceeds to tell me that even though I booked a KING room I would be getting a double room. There was an attempt to be polite on my end by saying I didn’t feel that was acceptable since I had booked the room a month in advance, was there no recourse or anything she would do to make this situation right. Her response was that I wasn’t the ONLY person who this happened to and Expedia was always over-booking the room types (even though I didn’t use Expedia to book, but ok) and if we wanted to stay there it was a double room.

At this point, I have no choice. I want to shower, I’ve already paid for the room, so I give in and say ok. So in addition to not getting the room type I want, she then proceeds to tell me if I want to park there I have to pay a fee (also after the fact, I found out you actually won’t even get a spot AT the hotel, but across a relatively busy street). Could she have thrown the parking in as a freebie to smooth over an unsatisfying situation for a guest, yes, did she? No.

She then proceeded to try to sell me on their breakfast (which was NOT continental) by giving me a menu and telling me to look at it while she got the keys ready. I politely laid it on her desk and told her no thank you, we wouldn’t be eating there.

So we finally get our luggage and get up to the room. I’m frustrated and need a nap at this point, so everything is just annoying me, but the room was honestly just OK. It was clean, but not spectacularly clean. It was cool, but not normal hotel room cool. And the bathroom was super basic.

Then as were getting settled in we heard loud shouting and noises coming from the street our window was facing.

I knew there had been some protesting, rioting, and looting in the weeks leading up to our trip, but the Charleston mayor had lifted the curfew for the city, so I assumed everything was good.

Luckily, this was a peaceful protest and the police were blocking off the streets for them and monitoring the situation and had a large presence during the whole thing. And please don’t take this the wrong way I get it. I’m all for peaceful assembly. Freedom of speech is a quintessential right we have as American’s and we NEED to use it.

But when you want to take a nap, people screaming on megaphones outside your window for forty-five minutes isn’t really helping your already grumpy state.

Alas, I never took that nap. I took a shower instead and went down and got a glass of wine while Ethan showered. Which was almost as good as a nap.

After we both got ready we headed out for drinks and dinner. I can’t really explain to you why I didn’t think about WHERE we would go for dinner beforehand. Maybe I was trying out spontaneity, maybe I just had brain fog. Either way I just thought “Oh, we’ll just stroll through downtown stopping here and there until we find somewhere we want to eat!”.

Wrong.

Due to COVID-19 plus the looting that had occurred the week before many restaurants were still shut down. This meant that there was a LARGE number of people trying to pack into all of the open restaurants that were only able to seat at half capacity. Which lead to REALLLLLLY LONG waits!

We ended up at Revival, a restaurant at the Vendue Inn.

They didn’t have a wait (I’m assuming because the menu is on the pricier side, which in Charleston I feel like is expected, but also maybe because of portion sizes?).

Most restaurants in downtown Charleston (like most tourist destinations) have their menus posted outside. We checked it out, both saw things we liked and walked in hoping you weren’t required to have reservations.

Luckily, you weren’t!

They sat us right away at a cute little table by the window looking onto the main street. I’m going to be honest with you, after all this walking all I honestly cared about was my second glass of wine. Which they delivered on!

Our waiter was super friendly and while the atmosphere was more “uppity” we didn’t feel out of place or anything. I ordered a salad and Ethan went for the usual Charleston eat, shrimp and grits.

The food was delicious! But like I mentioned before, the portions were small. So if you’re looking for your heaping bowl of shrimp and grits that is three days worth of meals, this is not your place. I would call it not quite tapas, but not portions you’re used to.

Side note – I’m pretty sure they brought us bread and it was super delicious, which is why I only ordered a salad.

After dinner we walked down the waterfront towards the battery.

We didn’t make it all the way to the battery, but we stopped for some blurry photo ops nonetheless.

Strolling around Charleston is my favorite. No timeline, no where to be, just wandering taking in the sights, sounds, and smells. It’s especially nice after a few glasses of wine and a nice dinner.

On the way back to the hotel we passed by New York City Pizza on East Bay street. Yes, I know I just had dinner. No, I don’t care. Ethan asked was I serious too. We stopped in and they had my FAVORITE beer on draft (Sierra Nevada 420 Strain G13 IPA, so of course I got one!

I should note – I don’t really recommend switching from wine to beer this late in the night when you are about to eat pizza, it’s just generally a bad idea. I mean nothing too bad came from it this time, but generally.

We drank our beers while we waited on my cheese pizza! We took it to-go (and by to-go I mean I ate a slice with zero shame walking down the street back to the hotel).

Pretty sure I hit up the bar at the hotel on our way back in for another glass of wine. I didn’t finish my beer if it makes you feel better. Then we went up to the room scarfed down pizza and crashed.

The next morning I had plans to eat somewhere super cute for breakfast. And do you know where we ended up?

Subway. No not a fancy brunch place with mimosas coincidentally named Subway. Just Subway with the have it your way subs. This was due to the same issue as dinner and everybody and their mama wanted breakfast the same time as us apparently.

We were both tired, hungover, and hungry though so the subs did the trick with no wait! I wanted to stop into some of the shops after we ate (we had already hit up the Candy Kitchen for my pralines!), but those plans got diverted a little when a man came in (clearly a local) and told the girl working at the Subway (I’m assuming they knew each other) that shots had just been fired on King St.

King St. is the street adjacent to said Subway. Right after I hear this a group of people cluster outside of the Subway and just stand there looking confused. Then suddenly a police car comes WHIZZING around the corner lights and sirens ON.

Nope. My anxiety can’t take it.

We finished our subs, bee lined to the nearest shop that sold t-shirts. I grabbed me and my mom one and we headed back to the car.

I really wanted to walk around the Battery since we hadn’t made it the night before so we decided to drive there instead of walk and just see how it was. We did get out and walk around a little bit, but you could tell everyone was slightly on edge. Plus there were clearly a swam of unmarked cars circling the perimeter and I just wasn’t about all that.

We wanted to get home kind of early in the day anyways so we hopped back in the truck and headed home!

In The End…

It was a good trip overall! I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was so nice to relax on the beach, sip good wine (and White Claws!), and just be with one another and not have any real plan.

Things certainly looked a little different this year, but I’m chalking up to #2020 and hoping to get back to somewhat “normal” travel next year!

Have you been anywhere during the pandemic? Where there additional rules/restrictions? Did you think it was worth it? I’d love to hear from you!