17 - Girls Trip to Charleston

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ding ding

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with me last week and I wanted to take them to one of my favorite places in the world which is Charleston, South Carolina. And when I knew I wanted to go back to Charleston this year, I kind of, I don't even know how, do y'all know how this came about, this trip, really? You don't? No.

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You're going to have to talk louder than that. So I don't really know how this trip came about, but we decided we wanted to go just as girls. We've never done that before. And we wanted to just experience the historic part of Charleston, especially. I know Sydney is especially, I mean both of them love plants, but Sydney has become the crazy plant lady over time.

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That's what she was most interested in about Charleston was when I told her about all of the plants in the windows, the window boxes, and just how everything was so like, well, landscaped and manicured and everything that she was just really intrigued by that and wanted to see it in person. So we had actually anticipated going a little later in the year, but when a partnership opportunity arose with the place that we actually ended up staying, it was only available.

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to us for February, so that's when we ended up going. And I knew it would be a little bit warmer in Charleston than it is here in North Carolina, but I was a little concerned about it. I didn't know if it was just gonna be too cold or if there was not really gonna be anything blooming or anything like that. So, but we were pleasantly surprised, weren't you? That there were plants.

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Some were some had not bloomed yet, but there were plants and lots of greenery ivy and things growing so it wasn't like It was dead. You know I mean not like here. I mean starting to green up here, too, but Anywho All right, so we started on our adventure, and I just want to preface this by saying that Daddy was the real MVP for this whole trip because he had to

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hold down the farm and the boys the whole time we were gone. Yeah. And we felt really bad for him. Because we got back into town and we were just like, okay daddy, you're off duty. We're gonna take care of things for you. And we've like paid him back by doing his chores and stuff. So, but yeah, it was quite an undertaking for him to be here alone without us. But doesn't that just make y'all feel good that like.

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We hold so much weight around here, right? That it was a lot for Daddy to do by himself. Yeah. Gosh. You're gonna say more than the others, aren't you? No. Yeah, I know, and I always think so too. No, you're gonna talk. Just pretend we're having a conversation. That's what we're doing. We're just talking to us about our trip, okay? Okay. We're reliving our trip. Okay. I want you to let everyone know.

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all of the wonderful things that you experienced on this trip and the things that you want other people to know about. Okay? Alright, so on the way down I had actually heard about this place called Seaweed Outpost and we think it's pronounced Seaweed. I got Cindy to look it up. So it's my fault if it's not right. So it's exactly your fault. So I had read about it in

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and it's actually based in Charleston and I honestly didn't know that until recently. And so it's like a little, what would you call this place? It's kind of like the, have y'all been to the Eldorado Outpost here? No. Okay, so we have an outpost that's kind of near us and it's very similar. It's like a store, they had clothing in there, they had food, so it's like a grocery store. They also had like a

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little restaurant, luncheonette place in the back, right? What did y'all get? What did you get? I got a chicken sandwich. Got a chicken sandwich, what'd you get? I can't remember. It was a barbecue sandwich. All right, Stella got a barbecue sandwich and I got a chicken sandwich as well. And it was really good. One, like we don't, I would not say we are like fast food people, we are just not. We cook our meals at home.

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every day, we rarely eat out, and so we were a little bit, not nervous, that's not the right word, but we were a little bit hesitant about the fried chicken sandwich that we were gonna get at this basically gas station, right? But what did you say? I remember you said something about it when you were eating it, you said what? Tasted real. It tasted real, so. So I thought that was a.

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pretty good compliment to the outpost there because we don't eat out very much and when we do it tastes fake right? Fake meat but this was real. Yeah. Okay so moving on from there we went and just checked into our our house that we stayed in for the week and it's called the Juliet

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and I'm gonna do a whole separate episode on the Juliet. So be watching for that in the next few weeks. But for now, we're just gonna talk about the rest of our trip and kind of, we loved the Juliet, right? Loved it. She said, yeah, if you didn't hear it. Yeah. Loved the Juliet, loved so much about it and I'm gonna share all those details with you in a separate episode, but.

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For now we're just gonna talk about the rest of our trip, where we went, what we ate, what we did, all that kind of stuff, all the new experiences we had, right? Because we cut back into town at the end of the week and I had several people say, "'Did you have a relaxing time?' And Adam even said, "'Do you feel refreshed?' And I was like, no. Did y'all feel refreshed? Not really.

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They had a little more free time. I mean, we didn't do chores and that kind of thing, but it was like, it was not a comfortable trip, I would say, because we had to do some things out of our comfort zone, right? Yeah. Like way out. Oh, okay. Like way out. So we'll share about those in a minute, but just driving for me, being the driver, I told Adam I had a new appreciation for him, new level, because he always drives me everywhere.

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that we go, that we travel to, and I've never had to. I mean, he probably didn't want me to, honestly. Um, but, uh, yeah, I had to do all the navigating and all the driving, and that was not fun at all. So, um, so we went to the downtown area, the historic area, which is, you know, where I really wanted the girls to get to experience. And, um,

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We parked at the Battery, which I have found to be a pretty good place to park. I mean, you can park in any of the parking decks and things around town, and you're going to obviously pay to park. But I do not love parking decks. They make me feel claustrophobic and a little nervous. Actually a lot nervous. And the battery, the parking at the battery is free. You just know you're going to walk when you go to the battery.

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We were ready to walk. We walked, how long? How many, remember I told you how many miles we walked that day? Like six miles. We walked like six miles each day, each full day that we were in Charleston. And so we saw all of the iconic Charleston attractions. We saw the battery. Did y'all like the battery? Do you remember the battery with the big S?

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trees and everything? Yeah. Did you like the battery? What did you like about it?

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I don't know.

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You like the cannons, you saw the cannons, right? I mean, I didn't like them. Okay. What did you like when we were walking around town? What sticks out to you? I want you to be able to have your voice heard. So, what did you like? And you be thinking too, Sydney.

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Like what was your favorite thing that we saw when we were walking around town?

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The plants the plants yeah, so there wasn't like one thing like the pineapple fountain or rainbow row or Anything like that that you were like that was my favorite thing if I go back to Charleston, that's the place I want to go Well that place

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So the waterfront part, yeah, that was really pretty out there. That's good. I like it out there too.

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And what about you? The plants. The plants, everyone loves the plants. I do too. But aside from the plants, because the plants are everywhere, what was your one favorite, like iconic place that we went that day? Rainbow Row. Yeah, Rainbow Row. It gets me every time. And we were on Rainbow Row and there was a lady walking three little dogs that were adorable, right? Yeah.

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little spaniels and then she like walked into the like the pink house on Rainbow Row and we're like what she lives here so yes loved Rainbow Row we walked to the market did y'all like the market uh-huh what did you like about the market

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Okay, we liked it, but we don't know why. Okay. Um, no, we liked it because there was a bunch of people selling things.

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Oh my gosh. And there wasn't like, it was like, I don't know, it just seemed.

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clean and like, I don't know.

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the market seemed clean? Or just like, I don't know. I was just trying to understand what you were meaning. What about it was, it just looked cleaner? Yeah, it just looked better. Okay. Well kept. Yeah. Okay. And, um, did y'all get anything at the market? I can't remember. I got a couple of things. I've never honestly bought anything at the market. It's not been my favorite.

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necessarily but lots of people go to the market you can say that louder she said some people sell things illegally well you know we did have a

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Well, anywhere you go, like a big city or tourist city, you will have people selling things to you or giving things to you and expect payment in return. And, you know, I had told the girls to expect that and just to, you know, kindly decline. And one time I kindly declined and then the guy got real mouthy about it and I've never experienced that there before. They've always been very...

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very nice in return but that was a little strange. I've never experienced that one before. But let's see St. Phillips Church. What did y'all think about St. Phillips Church? I think that's my favorite place in the whole city honestly. I think. Yeah I love it. It seems like every time we walk by it

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it's chiming and it only times on the hour but it always seems like it's chiming like when me and daddy would walk by it it was it was chiming and then and then when we were walking this time it was and then when we were on our ghost tour which we'll talk about in a minute it was it was chiming at a very interesting like dramatic pause in the in the ghost tour okay so Pugin's porch is where we ate for lunch that day that we were walking around

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Town and it's somewhere that I've heard about for a long time and it's been recommended that we eat there And so I thought we would give that a try What did y'all think about that? We each got the same we got the same thing, didn't we? Yeah, we each got a smash burger Because we had we had used a lot of calories up walking around town And so like there were several things on the menu that was like that would be really good That would be really good bells like we need protein We know lots of protein

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So how did you like your burgers? They were good. I wanted to take a nap afterwards. You did? You know what I like more than the burgers? The fries. Do you remember the fries? Yeah, they were really good. But the burgers were good too.

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What was that about? They were like spirally sort of. Okay, you liked your burger honey? Okay. And let's see, where else do we go? Washington Park, which I had honestly never gone before. It's got a big statue of George Washington in the middle there. And that's about, well no, I'll take that back, High Cotton. So why did we go to High Cotton? We didn't actually eat there.

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We just took pictures there and why did we do that? Why wouldn't we do that? There's a movie film there. Okay so part there's a scene from the notebook that was filmed there at High Cotton inside and outside. There was this one scene with Ryan Gosling looking through the window and so we tried to recreate and we were trying to find which window it was and everything.

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And that was funny, I took pictures of that. But, so you stood, you stood right there where Ryan Gosling stood, can you believe it? Does that make you all like jittery? Not really. Okay. They actually, honestly have not seen the notebook, but I did show them that one scene. I wanted to show them the whole movie before this, but I couldn't bring myself to do it because it was just, too much of it was too inappropriate for these children of mine, so.

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What? Super rep for youngsters? Youngsters. Okay, and so that night we went back to town, we went back to the house to rest for a while, and then we went back that night, but what did we have to do that made us super uncomfortable to get there? We had to Uber for the first time in our whole lives.

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And usually we have daddy with us who is a little more comfortable with things like that or I don't know about comfortable but I guess he's just had more experiences doing stuff like that than we have. And so he preferred us to Uber instead of having to drive and park and walk around the city at night by ourselves. So we honored him in getting way out of our comfort zone and figuring Uber out. And what did y'all think about Uber?

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What about our first driver? First driver, he was fine. He was, he was, I liked him. He was very quiet. He didn't speak English. That's why he was quiet. Yeah. And I tried to talk to him and he was just like, I don't know what you're talking about lady. But then the second one. Oh wow. When we had to leave and go home that night, our second Uber.

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He was very, very friendly and very talkative. He was Shelly Welly. Any talkative? Yeah, the girls were dying because I got in the car and he says, what did he say? What up, Shelly Welly? Shelly Welly and the girls are back in the back just snickering and trying not to laugh. But he was very talkative and very helpful. I think he had, how long did he say he'd been doing this? Like 20 some years or something. 25 years, something like that. Yeah, and he.

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He was like, I know everything there is to know about this place, you know, and he had a like a little Laminated card that he kept in his visor and he was like do you have all of your Rest of your trip planned like where you're eating and all this stuff and I was just like well kind of and he's like well take a picture of this and he like got the card out and it had like all this it was just a Really lengthy list of like bunches of restaurants and stuff and he said

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Now when my people tell me recommend places, then I take notice so I can let other people know. And we told him that we were going to Middleton Place the next day, which we're gonna get to in a second. And he told us a story about Middleton Place. He said, are you gonna Uber there? And I said, no, we're gonna drive. And he said, okay, you're good then. Because he was telling us a story about how people couldn't get an Uber from Middleton Place back to Charleston because

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of the cell phone service or something or another. And like these people that got stuck there and had to like thumb a ride back to Charleston, I was like, no, yeah, we can't do that. So we'll drive, thank you. But he was fun and our whole Uber experience was okay, right, so we got back that night and I'm like, girls, we did not die tonight. I call that a win. I call it a win that we didn't die.

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And so what did we go into town for that night? What were we doing? A ghost tour. So when we were planning our trip, I asked the girls, what is the number one thing that you have to do on this trip for it to be a good trip for you? What do we have to do? Non-negotiable, and both of them agreed it was the ghost tour, right? So they've never been on a ghost tour before in one of these cities. I've actually been on a Charleston ghost tour before when I was...

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young, yeah, when I was probably still in high school with my parents and sister. We went on one, I remember, I don't remember anything about it, I just remember going while we were in Charleston. But this was with Bulldog Tours and this was called the Ghosts and Graveyards Tour and we had a really amazing tour guide. At first we were a little, I was a little concerned because he was a little eccentric.

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And he was talking about how he's really into paranormal stuff, the ghost hunting shows, he is that person. And I was like, oh gosh, what are we getting ourselves into here? But he did say that it was okay if we didn't believe it. And he was just telling us some folklore kind of things to start with before we even went on the tour and what to watch out for while we're walking. What was it called?

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something booger no? No, I was talking about the hag. Oh yeah, I can't. The boo hag? Yeah. The boo hag, yeah. So we watch it out for the boo hag and they take on shapes of different people and all this kind of stuff. So anyways, it was fun and entertaining. He kept looking at Stella at like, he kept saying, you're doing great sweetheart, you know, stuff like that. I was like, how are you doing? Are you doing okay? And um, but.

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So what did I mean we walked we didn't walk all over the city, but we walked to the circular churches graveyard We walked in front of st. Phillips and this is where that dramatic pause and the bells ringing Happened kind of scared everybody I think I got that on video. I think I actually shared that on Instagram. I think I was videoing when that happened but

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you know everybody was laughing about that and there were lots of ghost tours going on. We kept running into different groups that night. You remember? No. I remember he scared us to death. And then he booed us one time. I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't think that was going to happen on this tour. I don't even remember what he was talking about when he did it, do you? He said, as Betty said- He was talking about somebody like jumping out and scaring people. Uh huh. Oh, and then he actually did it.

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Yeah, yeah. Like he was talking about a certain ghost and what he does. Yeah, like whistles and like, it's like a gunshot. Oh, that's right. Oh, that's right. That was the gunshot part, I think. We were on Philadelphia Alley and he was talking about how they used to have duels, like shootouts on Philadelphia and how you can still hear some of that if you come at night by yourself or whatever

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people that were dueling were and who died and that kind of thing. So anyways, the bang, the boo. You had to walk down the thing by yourself. By yourself at night, he says. So is that when he said something to you about doing that, didn't he? Yeah. He looked at the cell and he was just like, let's do that. He did it and then he was like, repeat. He said he's done it and he said he's heard things, but.

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What else? What was good? I mean, what did you like the most or what was there a certain story you like the most or did anything really scare you? Would you recommend the tour? Yeah, I'd recommend it. Yeah? It was all scary. It was all scary? Yeah. Okay. But you didn't have trouble sleeping, did you? No.

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Yeah. I mean, I did at first, but then it was fine. Yeah. They thought they were going to have trouble sleeping, but I think... I didn't. I thought I'd be fine. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. No. But our tour guide, his name was Randy. We highly recommend Randy. He was really nice. When we tipped him at the end, he gave me a hug. I was only when he hugged, I think. Yeah. I was like, wow, how nice. But he was, he acted like he was very...

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surprised and appreciate appreciated all of the tips and all of the kind words that everyone had for him but you could just tell like he was gifted and what he did like he was not only did he love like he loved studying the history and uh... you know the paranormal and all those all the things that that goes towards about uh... but he he is a gifted like actor

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he's very into it. Very good storyteller. So we highly recommend Bulldog Tours and the Ghost in Graveyard Tour with Randy if you decide to go and if you do make sure that they know about our podcast and that you learned it from from us. So, um, that's so funny. My back is getting hot. Okay.

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So we're going to talk about Middleton Place, but first let's kind of like skip over Middleton to go to the end of our trip and how AT&T completely dropped service on everybody that morning. And so I do have a paper map in my car, but I was a little concerned because my GPS would not work. And so before we left our,

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Airbnb the I had to get the address for Folly Beach because Sydney was wanting to see Folly Beach And so we got the address. I said no girls we can get to Folly Beach, but if I don't get service Hmm if I don't get service Before we leave Folly Beach Then I don't know if I'm gonna be able to navigate us to the other places that we're wanting to go like we still had Not gone to the angel oak tree

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We were talking about going to Taco Boy or Two Pages, one of the restaurants that I liked there. And so we ended up going to Folly Beach, did not have service, had to ride around. Well, we found a plant nursery. That was the big thing. My favorite place. That was probably our favorite place besides Charleston. That was our favorite place. Well, Sydney thinks that might have been her favorite place of all.

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Charleston and it was it was beautiful it was like the biggest plant nursery I think I've been to before they had just about anything you could imagine there and it's called Hyams and we got several things there didn't we? I mean we had to really tone it down I got one plant that was like amazing.

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I really want several but...

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Four? Three? Three. Three? And I got one from Middleton. Oh yeah. What did you get?

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The place is definitely recommended for plant lovers. Yeah, yes. If you're a plant lover like we are, please go to Hyams. It's on Folly Road. I think I got like 7 or 8. Yeah, y'all got a lot. They're beautiful. I mean I've never seen some of the plants that they got. So, it was really nice. But, so we ended up...

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just having to drive around after the garden center till I found some wifi somewhere at like a Duncan, we just parked outside of a Duncan so that I could plug in our home address and then get home because I was a little worried I was gonna have to navigate with a paper map if we went anywhere else and I didn't really wanna do that. So. I still don't understand why my phone was working. I don't know either. But about halfway home, we got internet service again, but thankfully I.

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we knew where we were and the GPS was working and everything. So, all right. So, we will talk about Middleton Place on our next episode. So if you will please come back, if you're not already subscribed to our podcast, if you'll just hit the subscribe button so that you will get notified when we have a new episode. You do not wanna miss the Middleton Place episode because it was fantastic.

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We are huge fans now and we really wish that we live closer to Charleston for Middleton Place alone. So please join us next time for that.