Friday Favorites: Things To Do In Charleston

Whew! It’s Friday again, thank goodness am I right? It’s been a pretty hectic week at work so I am happy to see the weekend.  It’s officially been a week since we went on our little getaway to Charleston, and I can’t get that trip out of my head. I just fell in love with the city, the scenery, and (of course) the food. If you missed my post on the best places to eat in Charleston on Wednesday check it out here. But today, I’m sharing my favorite things we did in Charleston last weekend.

Charleston is SUCH a fun town and I just loved exploring and walking around. We were only there for a long weekend but packed in as much as we could. I’ll start with the coolest thing we did. We used Air BNB to rent someone’s sailboat. That’s right, we chose to change things up and sleep on a boat. It was a completely different experience from staying on a hotel. We had coffee on the deck in the morning while we watched the sunrise, and drank wine as it sank at night.

I will say the bathroom situation was not ideal, which I expected. It did have a shower, but the mirror was my major setback. I just couldn’t put my face on with such a teeny mirror so I opted for the boat house right around the corner for showering and primping. What can I say, I’m a smidge high-maintenance.

Here are some other very cool things we did.

City Market: City Market is right smack dab in the middle of Charleston and it is huge. I thought it would be just a cute and flea market-esque. I did not expect pavilion after pavilion full of vendors selling their goodies. Old Whaling Company was my favorite stop. They make homemade soaps, bath bombs, body lotion and scrubs. I am one of those people when I go to a soap or candle store I stop and smell every single one. Stephen and I both freaked a little over the Sea La Vie scent so we purchased a bar of soap.

Charleston Tea Plantation: I adore tea. I don’t drink coffee at all, but tea I would drink by the gallon. The Charleston Tea Plantation is America’s ONLY tea plantation and it is not an easy process. It was so cool to see how the tea leaves are harvested and made into either the loose leaves or tea bags. The other great thing about the plantation is everything is free except for a $10 trolley ride (which I highly recommend!) and you can drink ALL the tea you want. Dreams do come true.

Magnolia Plantation and Garden: I didn’t have high hopes for this place. It sounded like a big swamp to me, but I figured we would go and check it out. When we got there, a whole flock of peacocks paraded into the entrance. Now for those that don’t know, peacocks are hands down my favorite animal so I had a minor anxiety attack. Then I found out that right through the entrance is a cafe where you can eat and potentially they might sit with you. So I ordered a Diet Coke and sure enough, was able to sit down at the table next to a peacock. At this point I probably needed sedation, but we powered through. The gardens are gorgeous and each flower and secret path was more beautiful than the next. We ended up turning what I thought would be a 30 minute stop into a 4 hour leisurely stroll. Oh and there is a petting zoo at the end complete with, you guessed it, more peacocks.

Rainbow Row: These are the 13 perfect multicolored houses that grace Instagram quite frequently. They were just as beautiful as I expected.

The Alley: This was a late night treat. The Alley is bowling, vintage arcade games, and nachos! Ok, they have other food too, but we had the nachos. It was a lot of fun right down the street from the main bars.

Honorable mentions: Waterfront Park and the Pineapple Fountain, Battery Park, Charleston Distilling Company (try the Tolerance, it’ll change your life!), and of course, Folly Beach.

Have you ever been to Charleston? What was your favorite thing to do?