Charleston!

Allen and I have been wanting to go to Charleston for a while now. We have both been there separately and went for a quick day trip together, once, but we hadn't been able to spend a whole weekend there. So, when we found out Meghan's (Mary's best friend) wedding was going to be in Charleston, we knew we wanted to make a whole weekend of our time there. Allen had earned enough hotel points that we were even able to stay for free both nights! So, we took Friday off and headed to Charleston bright and early with our good friends Nikki and Alex!

When we got to town, we walked through the infamous City Market. There were lots of neat things for sale, but we refrained from buying anything!

After walking through the Market we headed over to the carriage tours (we had booked this earlier in the week). Our horse's name was Berry and he and our tour guide did a wonderful job of showing us and teaching us about the beautiful historic city of Charleston.

After our tour we had a delicious lunch at a restaurant called "The Noisy Oyster". Then we headed to the hotel to check in.

Once we had checked into the hotel we decided to go to the Firefly distillery. For those of you who haven't heard of "Firefly", they are a Charleston based distillery that invented sweet tea vodka.  At the distillery we did a tasting. It was fun, but Nikki and I weren't huge fans of drinking straight vodka - they needed something to mix it with, but I guess that would defeat the purpose of a tasting :)  The unanimous favorite of our group was the lemonade vodka.. it was yummy!

After our time at Firefly, we headed back to the hotel for a quick nap and to get ready for dinner. We ate at a place called "Jestine's Kitchen" . They had southern style cooking and the food was absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend it if you are planning to visit Charleston. While we were eating dinner, Mom and Barna were headed to town, so they met up with us and we all went downtown for a while for a few drinks.

Saturday morning, we woke up early and headed back to town with Nikki, Alex, Mom, Barna, and Kyle. We walked through the market again, and then walked along the waterfront and through different parts of downtown. We had lunch at another wonderful restaurant, Barbara Jean's (probably our favorite of the weekend). Barbara Jean's was right near a frozen yogurt shop, so of course after lunch, I had to have a cup of frozen yogurt! Then we headed back to the hotel to get ready for Meghan's wedding!

Meghan's wedding was at a beautiful church downtown. The ceremony was absolutely gorgeous, and Meghan was a stunning bride! Mary was her matron of honor :)

We left the ceremony and headed to the reception at Founder's Hall. The reception was just a nice as the ceremony. The decorations were beautiful, the food was delicious, and we had a great time! Josh and Meghan are such a wonderful couple and we are so excited for them and their future as husband and wife!

Sunday morning we woke up and headed to town one last time. We walked around and did some more sightseeing, then had another great lunch (I don't think there is bad food in Charleston) at Eli's table. After lunch we wrapped up our amazing trip and headed back home so happy to have had such a nice relaxing weekend!