A Fantastic Birthday
Sorry I'm late getting this out. I've been waiting for Kevin to upload his flickr pictures so I could use his fabulous pictures, but since he is taking forever making each one perfect, I'll go ahead and write this and maybe integrade is pictures later.
Thursday morning I got up really early and packed my car all up to head over to Kevin's house. I woke him up and made him breakfast. Yes, I cooked! Sort of...his bacon and sausage were microwavable, but I made him scrabbled eggs all by myself! We finally left, and actually didn't leave to late. We stopped a couple places and then we were finally off on the road!
When we got to Charlotte we went to South Park Mall. This really upity mall that has almost every expensive store you can think of, and Belk! Haha. We had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Kevin loved his meal, but mine was kinda of the gross side, so I didn't eat much of mine. But thanks to Dawn, we had a Cheesecake Factory Gift Card! YAY! We didn't end up getting any cheesecake, but that's alright! If you ever go to one, I recommend the Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake, it is SOOO good. AND Gluten Free, which means my mom can eat it. I'm planning on getting one of those cheesecakes for her for my wedding (if and when that will ever happen, haha) so she can have some "cake" too. After lunch we had passed some stores Kevin wanted to peak into, and we, of course, had to go to the Apple store. We played with the iphone!
Here is me playing with the iphone (taken by Kevin Cupp):
That was fun, and I updated this from one! (As you can see in the blog post before this one) We finally managed to pull ourselves away from the iphone and head off in the direction of Charleston.
By the time we got there we were pretty tired. We got all checked in, and the manager, Debbie, she was SO nice. She took us up to our room (on the fourth floor, naturally). This is what we saw:
It was so pretty and actually pretty big for a bedroom. We got situated in our room and decided to forego going to Boone Hall right then for walking around Charleston. We decided to go down King Street and back up Meeting Street. On our way out, I snapped a few pictures of King George IV Inn.
This is the front:
The back:
The side porch:
And the cat!:
That's Victoria. She's famous, they put her on the map next to where the Inn is. Pretty awesome :).
So, we continued our trek down King Street. There are a ton of shoe stores. I've never seen so many shoe stores along one street. I thought is was a little weird. We passed amazing houses. I would LOVE to live there. It was really hot, but I'd get use to it I'm sure. Here are a few that caught my eye:
A fantastic blue colored house. I just LOVE that color! Remind you of a certain blog color?:
I love the porch and the windows on this house. Very pretty:
And this one has a fabulous entrance:
We finally got to the end of the road at the White Point Gardens Park. SO pretty. When I saw it for the first time I knew that was where I wanted to get married, but...Charleston is just too far for the old people in my family to travel! My grandparents in New Jersey have to travel 7-9 hours to begin with, and there is no way my grandma is getting on a plane, haha.
Anyway, we walked along under the trees and looked at the beautiful houses along that road through the trees, later we walked right in front of them. We went up into the gazebo that is in the middle of the park.
This is Kevin taking pictures in the Gazebo:
And this is the huge gazebo:
It is dedicated to some people, but I forget who. After taking some pictures we walked over to the water. You could see Fort Sumter way out in the distance like a pancake with a flag pole sticking out of it. There were a bunch of pigeons.
I tried to get close to one to get a good picture:
This was the view we saw:
We walked back toward Meeting Street and stopped a lot to look at each house. They're huge next to the park.
I'd love to live in this one, I love the color and the porch...just everything!:
This one, we were told, has a woman in her 60s living in it. She lives in two rooms of the mansion and the rest of the house is roped off because it's falling apart so much. It is very battered looking because it wasn't fixed back up after a strong hurricane passed through a few years ago. We were told that there is an indoor pool with a glass ceiling and a huge ballroom. The lady had inheritated the house from her mother two years ago. It has so much potential, it'd be a really good investment to fix that house up!:
I love the symmetry with this one!:
Kevin and I walked back up toward the shopping district and looked at more and more beautiful houses. I just love how every single house is so pretty and so unique! They even had lamps that had actual flame!
We saw some pretty neat things along the way.
A tree that did not agree with a sidewalk being there:
A very crowded graveyard:
A pretty turtle:
A cobblestone street (very hard to walk on):
And I thought this church was pretty neat looking:
By this time we were pretty hungry. We found Bubba Gump Shrimp Company to eat at! (Luckily it was in the direction we were going)
If you've never been, they have signs that you can let the waiter know if you need them or not:
The other one says "Stop Forrest Stop!" That was fun. :) I got a VERY VERY good strawberry smoothie in a light up glass. That was pretty awesome. I just love Bubba Gump now, I hate seafood, but they have more than seafood, so that works for me, haha. After dinner we headed on back to the B&B because we were pretty exhausted.
End of day one!
Next morning -- MY BIRTHDAY! We went downstairs and got some breakfast. I got a waffle and some fruit. It was good. After breakfast we hurried to catch our carriage ride. We finally found it and waited until it was time to load. It was really hot and humid already, at 9:00 in the morning! We were ready to go back indoors! Haha. We finally got on the carriage and away we were on the tour. Here are some highlights:
It's a little dark, but I didn't want to flash in his face, this was our carriage tour guide:
This building was the last building built with the King's money before the Revolution. It was a stock exchange:
George Washington stayed here once:
I think it is so cool that I can see a building that George Washington saw hundreds of years ago!
This is a figure on an old hat store. He is made up of lots of different kinds of hats you can find in a hat store:
These are baskets and decorations made out of sweet grass at the Market:
After the carriage ride we found some water since we were getting really really hot. We decided to go and find Rainbow Row again and the smallest road in Charleston.
Along the way we found another turtle!:
We found Rainbow Row:
And the smallest road in Charleston:
We walked back over toward the Water Front Park. That was SO pretty. I loved walking around under all the trees and seeing the pretty water and the fountains.
The new bridge between Charleston and Mt. Pleasant:
A pretty walkway:
A pineapple fountain:
Kevin cooling off his feet. You could wade in the fountain down to the second step, haha:
Kids playing in a big fountain, a great way to cool off:
After we left the Water Front Park we walked over to the cobblestone street, there are some buildings there that we wanted to see.
One is possibly the oldest building in Charleston. It use to be a tavern:
And this building was the last Slave Market built in the area:
We passed the firemen's memorial at the Charleston Fire Department for those firemen who died when the roof collapsed on them a little while back. There are more flowers and stuff at the actual site, I saw that when we came through Charleston on our way back from the cruise a week before this trip:
We ended up going back to our room at the B&B and napping during the hottest part of the day. All that walking really wares you out! Around four we left to go to Boone Hall Plantation. It was so pretty! And it was really neat to see this place I've always loved looking at in the Notebook!
When we first walked over to it, this is what we saw:
We wern't allowed to take pictures inside the house, but once we got outside the back of the house, there was a 600 year old tree sitting down by the water:
Here is me sitting on the tree:
The back of the house:
One of nine slave houses left at the plantation (there use to be about 27):
This is one of my favorites. The Alley:
Kevin in front of the gates. That is a wedding rehearsal in the backround:
That's about it. We were getting pretty hungry since we hadn't eaten since lunch hours and hours before, so we headed back to Charleston. Kevin was making me choose where to go, since I was the birthday girl and all, haha, AND he let me know he was treating, that made me happy. :) (more so than I already was, of course) I chose Bubba Gump again. It was just so good!
They sang happy birthday to me and gave me free ice cream. It was yummy. After that we strolled along back to the B&B and watched some TV.
The next day we got up and ate breakfast then decided to head back home. We stopped at the mall again so explore it some more, I got a little present for Kyra (her fourth birthday is coming up!). After we got home we went to our seperate houses for a bit. My parents gave me presents. I got a pretty skirt and some jewelry! Later Kevin and I met up with Stephanie and we went to Dawn's mother-in-law's house for a little birthday party for me and Luke (Dawn's husband). We had some yummy food and relaxed in the hot tub! (It had gotten chilly so the pool wasn't that appealing, but later I found out it's heated). It was a lot of fun. Dawn got me one of the threadless shirts I've been wanting. Which one? Figure it out! Only one is crossed off, haha.
Anyway, that was my birthday weekend!
Next up: Steppin Out Friday and Saturday! I'm so excited!
~Taylor~
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