Weekend in Charleston

Aug 10

Written By Renee

This past weekend my parents and I took a quick trip to Charleston. Charleston is one of our favorite cities to visit because there are such great restaurants, shopping and history. Three days was the perfect amount of time for a trip there because we are able to do a lot but still have plenty of new stuff for future trips! It was so fun trying out some new restaurants and seeing the historic houses.

Day One

Our first stop was the Hominy Grill for lunch. When researching the best places to eat in Charleston, this was on nearly every list so we knew it had to be good. They have all the southern classics (my favorites) and there were so many good things to choose from. I opted for the Charleston Nasty Biscuit and was not disappointed. It was a piece of fried chicken breast in between a biscuit and covered with gravy that tasted like chicken pot pie. Boy was it good. I also ordered a side of deep fried grits which were really good but not necessary considering this biscuit was enormous.

After lunch we checked into the Belmond Charleston Place hotel. We were really impressed with the newly renovated room and you couldn't beat the location. It's located in between King and Meeting Street so everything is within walking distance. We didn't even get in a car from when we checked into the hotel until when we checked out.

After walking around King Street and doing some exploring we ate dinner at 82 Queen. While we didn't love the atmosphere the food was great! My mom and I both ordered the barbecue shrimp and grits which was a great twist on the traditional dish.

Day Two

We started off the day grabbing breakfast at Callie's Hot Little Biscuit. I had heard great things about it but we weren't blown away. It was a super cute and fun little (like, super little) place but the biscuits were very small and nothing special. We walked over to the farmer's market at Marion Square to eat them and then walked around the market.

We headed back over to the hotel and walked around King Street to do some shopping. There's a great Club Monaco and Moon & Lola and then we went into the store Irresistibles after seeing some striped shirts in the window. I was in the market for a Saint James one but ended up adding two Joules ones to my wardrobe. I had only heard of Joules because they have the cutest rain boots but didn't know they made such cute clothes!

We took some fun pictures on the cobblestone streets. Read the full post and shop this look here.

Since we had been walking around all day we treated ourselves to some gelato on King Street.

After evening mass we headed over to Amen Street Fish & Raw Bar for dinner. We last minute changed plans and canceled our reservations somewhere else to come here and I am so glad we did! We had the crispy calamari with bacon, corn and tomatoes as an appetizer and then I had the shrimp corn dog appetizer as my entrée. Both were so so good and this was probably my favorite restaurant we went to the whole weekend.

After walking around Market Street after dinner, we grabbed ice cream sandwiches at Peace Pies. All of the flavors sounded so good and had a scoop of ice cream with pie filling in between two crunchy cookies. I opted for the peanut butter turtle and was not disappointed.

Day Three

For breakfast we headed to Toast because it was close to the hotel and a few people had recommended it. This was the one place we were really disappointed with. I tried the french toast with cinnamon apples that was recommended by the New York Times but wasn't impressed. I didn't really understand how it was french toast because it was just a piece of bread with cinnamon apple syrup?

After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and drove over to the Battery to look around at the houses. I love walking down the cobblestone roads and I don't think there was a house I didn't love.

While walking around we came across the Calhoun House and decided to go on a tour. I had never heard of it but we thought it would be interesting to actually see the inside of one of the houses. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside but boy was it interesting. The current resident brought in twelve truckloads of antiques to decorate the place so it's pretty cluttered and overwhelming. It was kind of weird but it had an interesting history (not to mention they filmed part of The Notebook here)!