Charleston Trip | July - jacquelineandlaura.com

This trip has been many years in the making and we finally made it happen!! A girls trip to Charleston has been a dream of ours for a while now, and we had the perfect opportunity in July. We shot Emily & Josh’s wedding in Columbia the day before we headed down to the low country for a few days after and it was a blast!!

We had mapped out a DETAILED itinerary before the trip and stuck to it pretty well! But we hadn’t given ourselves much down time so we kept busy the whole trip! It was more exhausting than relaxing at times but we did it ALL haha!

SUNDAY

We finished Emily and Josh’s wedding in Columbia before sunset and headed to a hotel close by. We grabbed some Chipotle (more like stood in line for 15 minutes…haha y’all feel me?? Chipotle needs to up their service before we can become consistent customers because Chick-fil-a still has them beat by a mile!) and unloaded all the camera gear, all the suitcases, all the snacks, AND dinner and hauled it up to our hotel room. Our friends met us there shortly after and we hung out while simultaneously uploading sneak peeks from the day!

MONDAY

We couldn’t check into our Air BnB until later that afternoon, so the obvious option was to head straight to the beach! We arrived to Charleston around lunchtime and got some subs (and a pool float) at Publix before we went to Isle of Palms. Because we still had all our belongings in the car with us, this beach trip involved lugging chairs, a tent, lunch, and a camera bag with our valuables down to the sand. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend…

After an afternoon by the ocean we went to go check in at our air bnb! We stayed at a cottage in Mount Pleasant that’s literally in someone’s backyard! We had stayed there before in January when we came down for Julia and Ryan’s wedding and it’s convienient to both IOP and Downtown Charleston and so cute!! When we had checked on dates to reserve it this summer, these three days in July were the ONLY days left so we knew it was our sign to go!! After we checked in and carried all our many, many bags inside (have y’all gathered yet that we don’t pack lightly?) we went Downtown to see the sights and walk around. It was a gorgeous evening on the Battery!! We called in some pizza at Coastal Crust and picked it up after our downtown excursion to take it to the beach! We went to Sullivan’s Island for sunset and although there wasn’t too much of a sunset, it was still a highlight of the trip!!

TUESDAY

Our friend Caroline’s birthday was on Tuesday and we knew we wanted to surprise her. We told her that we would have to get up and “work” early that morning, but truthfully, we really just made a mad dash to all the Publix’s in Mount Pleasant in search of number balloons!! A Walmart and two Publix’s later at 7am, we were successful! Thankfully Caroline and our friend Abby were still sleeping when we got back and we pulled out the streamers and balloons and got to work. Abby came down to help decorate and we were all hoping Caroline would wake up at the right moment. We’re happy to say the 8am party was a success! We went to Tres Palmas Acai for smoothie bowls for breakfast and it was DELISH. We also took a walk around Old Village Mount Pleasant and picked out all our future homes 😉 Then, you guessed it, beach day two!! We lightened our load this time and ditched the tent and cooler. Later that afternoon we went back to the cottage to get ready for dinner. We drove downtown to do birthday photos before dinner and it was the perfect golden hour along with so. many. mosquitos. Not sure if mosquitos are fans of y’all or not, but Abby and Laura both got practically eaten alive while Jacqueline and Caroline escaped without a bite. Why though?? We got dinner and then went back to the cottage to eat ice cream in our PJs because that sounded better than the lines to all the ice cream shops haha! And we had already made about 3 other trips to Publix for various items, one of those being ice cream!

WEDNESDAY

So who’s tired yet?? Just kidding. We woke up and packed up the cottage so that when we came back by to change after the beach *all* we’d have to do was transport everything to the car. Easy, right? The beach was incredibly peaceful that morning and sitting by the water in a beach chair was wonderful! We got back to the cottage, changed, and miraculously got all our stuff out by noon. For lunch we tried Verde which was super good! Greenville needs one!! We walked around downtown for the last time, including the market and waterfront park. We finished out the trip the best way possible…Off Track Ice Cream!! We *personally* think it’s better than Jeni’s, although we can’t say that very fairly because we’ve had Off Track three times now and Jeni’s once, so we’ll check back on that when we’ve had more Jeni’s flavors 😉