Charleston, SC — Mint to be Trendy

Hi Friends!

What a year 2020 has been for all of us, we had planned on going to Australia this year but the pandemic had other plans us. Josh and I love to travel each year so this has probably been the longest we had gone without traveling. It had been over a year! I was starting to get really antsy and fed up with being stuck in our home town for too long.

I wanted to plan a trip but didn’t know where, I knew it had to be drivable as we didn’t feel comfortable flying yet with the pandemic still in place. I was stuck on where we should go, Josh was actually the one to suggest Charleston. I researched it and picked a date for us to go!

Charleston is a really cute city, with endless great food options and quite a few beach spots to go to as well. We ended up staying in an Airbnb on the beach of Isle of Palms and it was very nice! We loved being right on the beach. It’s a 9-9.5 hour drive for us from southern Indiana, and we aren’t morning people so we got in around 8 pm.

We started with dinner at The Obstinate Daughter on night 1. We had their geechie frites, Pappardelle pasta, and Rutledge pizza. We thought their pizza was really good and the frites were good, we were a bit disappointed with the pasta, it just didn’t have a fantastic flavor profile. The space itself had a cool vibe, but it was a little difficult to find as it was in a space that had other stores and you had to walk upstairs to find it. Overall I’d rate it a 7/10.

Our first full day we started with seeing The Drayton Hall and Magnolia Plantation & Gardens. Both were cool places, I recommend seeing if you have time! The Drayton Hall is an 18th century estate that is the nation’s earliest example of Palladian architecture. Shown below are the original blue walls and ceiling that were hand crafted. At Magnolia Plantation & Gardens we toured the main grounds, I don’t believe you can enter their plantation currently. It was a pretty place, but I bet it is even prettier in the spring when the flowers are in bloom. I loved all the moss trees and they had a cool bush maze we went through too!

We ate lunch at the historic 82 Queen Street, it was my favorite restaurant of all the ones we went to! I had their Bloody Mary, and barbeque shrimp and grits. Josh had the crab cake benedict, and we split a bowl of their famous she crab soup (it was my favorite thing we had).

After lunch we had explored The Battery and shopped along King St. The Battery is an extensive row of really pretty mansions, below are a few shots of my favorites. King St is a really cool area of local boutiques and restaurants, I will talk more in depth about what shops I enjoyed and bought stuff at here!

For dinner we went to the award winning Rodney Scott BBQ and split their whole hog, hush puppies, and mac n cheese. Rodney Scott BBQ is known for smoking it whole hog and serving Carolina style. Josh was looking forward to this so much, we were both a tad disappointed. I guess you can call us BBQ snobs, it just wasn’t that exciting but it was good! I’d rate it a 6/10. After we ate dinner we explored some of Charleston’s breweries and they did not disappoint! We went to Palmetto Brewery, Revelry Brewing, and finished at Holy City Brewing. Revelry had super cute balcony seating and Holy City had the best loaded fries I’ve had in a long time! I guess Josh and I were so hungry that we forgot to snap a photo of said fries.

Monday we hung out on Isle of Palms Beach which is where we stayed. It was nice and sunny, Josh and I stayed there until lunch time. For lunch we just went somewhere we could walk to and that would also not take much time as we had a sunset sail tour to go to at 4. We ate at Acme Kitchen and I had their whistle top shrimp and grits with fried green tomatoes, and Josh had their fish catch of the day sandwich. Place was okay, about what we expected. I’d rate it a 5/10.

The sailing tour we did through Charleston Harbor Tours and it was amazing! It was actually REALLY windy at the time so it worked out perfectly for the sails. We had time to kill before our dinner reservations so we checked out Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co and they had a really cool outdoor seating area and great beer! Highly recommend! We ended the night with dinner at Husk. At Husk we started with their house cured meats charcuterie board and then split their catfish and ended with apple pie. Husk was good, we would go back for sure! My personal favorite was the apple pie. I’d rate them a 7/10.

Tuesday we visited Folly Beach as it was one of the highest rated beaches on the internet in Charleston but honestly we preferred Isle of Palms beach. Folly felt too touristy for us, it definitely had all the souvenir shops and family friendly restaurants. We did find a light house on Folly Beach though! For lunch we ended up going to Lewis BBQ. When I was doing my initial restaurant research the highest rated were Lewis and Rodney Scott, I didn’t want to eat at 2 BBQ places in a few days time so Josh and I had narrowed it down to Rodney Scott because of the Carolina style BBQ for something different. Well we talked to the locals in passing at shops and other restaurants and they all told us to try Lewis, so we did and we are SO glad we did! It had such a cool indoor and outdoor space and was hands down the best BBQ we have ever had!! We had time to spare before our dinner reservations so we killed time at Wine and Company and happened to walk into their special wine tasting night and got to taste 5 wines for the SUPER cheap price of $10 a person! It was such a fun experience. We ended our final night in Charleston at Darling Oyster Bar and we both tried raw oysters for the first time and definitely understand what all the hype of oysters are now! They are SO delicious! We also had their blue crab tagliatelle.

Well ya’ll, that concludes our trip to Charleston. We absolutely loved every second of it and all that Charleston has to offer. We will for sure be back! Have you ever been to Charleston? What did you love?