Charleston
In summer 2017, Brendan decided he needed a vacation and invited me to go with him to Charleston, where his brother's family lived. We both took a week off of work, booked a hotel for two nights close-ish to King Street, and drove down on a Sunday in mid-July.
We spent a night at Kyle and Stephanie's house in West Ashley, about half an hour from downtown, and had a great time playing with their kids, Sofia (3) and Colton (6 months).
The next day, we headed to the closest beach on google maps, a small island called Folly Beach south of Charleston. We relaxed on the sand for a while, and swam in the ocean, pretending that either of us knew how to body surf.
Tired of the sun, we left Folly behind and drove into Charleston proper, stopping for lunch at YoBo Cantina Fresca on the way. Our hotel was just barely on the island that makes up Charleston's main area, with a tiny parking lot and water dripping down from the lobby ceiling. We dropped all our stuff off, glad that the leaking ceiling didn't seem to affect our room and napped through the afternoon's thunderstorm. We met up with Kyle's family again for dinner at Andolini's Pizza, and grabbed a bottle of wine on the way back to the hotel.
The next day, we set out to explore downtown Charleston on foot. We loosely aimed for the historic market (and ended up fourish blocks south), ready to be back inside for a bit when we came across the Provost Dungeon museum. We were just in time for a tour, and we joined eagerly, grateful to be back in AC. The dungeon was actually really neat, and we learned a lot about Charleston's history (including where the market was relative to the dungeon, information we filed away for after the tour).
We walked up to the market along the coast, managing to find it (and King Street) this time. Brendan picked up some spice samplers from a vendor in one of the outer stalls, a soup starter, an italian blend, and a chicken rub, before we walked back to the hotel.
Wanting to take advantage of the beach while we were close, we went back to Folly Island, grabbing lunch at a Irish pub a block inland, St. James Gate. I got their 'Adult Lunch Box', which consisted of a hot dog, a beer, and a shot, and Brendan opted for the Shepard's Pie. We checked maps for what to do in Charleston, and stumbled across Escape in 60, a set of escape rooms right across from the historic market. Neither of us had done an escape room before, but my friend Kaitlyn had been talking them up for a while, so we shrugged and booked one for later that night.
We spent an hour or two at the beach before heading back to Charleston, deciding we could figure out the bus system versus walking another 2 miles to the escape room. The bus was a nice mini-tour of parts of Charleston I hadn't seen before, like the Citadel. At the escape room, we were paired with another family of five and a younger couple before being introduced to the game: Prison Escape.
The next 60 minutes of our lives were singularly devoted to solving puzzles. We didn't know anyone else's names in our group, and we didn't need to. We were working together as if we'd done this before, unearthing keys and secret codes. In the end, we made it out with 2 minutes to spare, narrowly evading the warden!
We walked the 2 miles back to our hotel, stopping at Juanita Greenberg's Nacho Royale on King Street for some well-deserved tacos and beer. The next morning, we packed up and checked out of the hotel before meeting Kyle and the family for one last lunch at Jason's Deli before we headed home.