A few weekends ago, the Jakstadt women and me (formerly a Jakstadt woman), ventured together to Charleston, SC for our first annual “Girls Weekend”. I took that Friday off and began the morning with a run – since at that time I was still training for my first Half Marathon. Then, my mom and Kristen met me around lunchtime in Augusta. One of the nice things about living in Augusta is that we are much closer to the beach than Atlanta, so my drive was nice and short to Charleston.
We stopped in Columbia for lunch and then continued on to Charleston. It was really fun to catch up and talk. Even though we see each other fairly often, most of the time there are lots of people and kids around – so the rare quiet car ride was a perfect chance to catch up.
We soon arrived at the Hyatt Place in North Charleston which we got for only $40 a night with Kristen’s work discount – she works at the Grand Hyatt in Atlanta. Check out a cool video of her working there here!
As soon as we got there, we decided to be rebellious and didn’t even take our suitcases in or unpack – because that’s normally what the men in our lives would want to do…. Instead, we went to the outlet malls which were just across the street. I did quite a bit of damage, ending up with a new Coach purse, some stuff from my all-time fave store Banana Republic, and also some cute fall dresses from Ann Taylor Loft.
After that, we were pretty tired and decided to go to a Mexican restaurant nearby. Here’s a pic of us with our lime-green margaritas!
And here’s a pic of me and my sis with our radioactive drinks:
On Friday night, I realized I had just experienced my own perfect day – no work, a morning run, beautiful crisp weather, girl talk, outlet mall shopping, and Mexican food. It doesn’t get better than this! When I told Jason this, I told him of course, he was the one thing missing from the day!
The next day, my mom and I drove to downtown Charleston for a morning walk. The weather was absolutely perfect and we saw lots of other people enjoying the Saturday morning outside as well. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky…
After picking up Kristen at the hotel, we came back and enjoying some lunch in a cute little restaurant that was in a really old house – called
Poogan’s Porch. Apparently the restaurant is pretty famous – it’s website states,
“high profile celebrities including Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Lauren Hutton, Jim Carrey, Jody Foster, Joe Namath, Tennessee Williams, Barbara Streisand and James Brolin have visited and raved about Poogan’s.” Here’s us standing on the porch that overlooks the street.
And here’s us standing in front of the house:
After our lunch stop, we walked along King St. to do some shopping. One of the places we stopped was Pottery Barn – where I got some new ideas about fall and Christmas decorating. I love PB and use their catalogs like decorating magazines 🙂 And of course, you can’t go to Charleston without enjoying some old fashioned southern treats. My personal favorite is pralines. We got some of those and it inspired me to try making some this year. I even bought my very own candy thermometer yesterday!
We also did some shopping at the market where I bought some early Christmas gifts.
That night, we went to an amazing restaurant called Hank’s Seafood. The atmosphere was great, and it was even warm and toasty inside- unlike most restaurants where I’m freezing the whole time. But best of all, the food was delicious. I highly recommend this place to anyone visiting Charleston.
Here’s us with the mammoth cocktail shrimp they served us.
And you can’t forget dessert on Girls’ Weekend:
The next morning, we worked out in the hotel gym, had a relaxing breakfast, and headed back.
Overall, it was a great trip, lots of fun memories and treasured time with my mom and sis. Here’s looking forward to next year!
Related
yay for girls weekend! you described my ideal/perfect day too! y'all should come out and have a girls weekend in Denver…there are many places to do some good damage! 🙂