Travels to Charleston Part 5

The final day we were able to tour the gardens and plantation in Magnolia Plantation.  The history of this place was so interesting and there were about 400 acres left of the original plantation after the War of the States that were all beautiful gardens.  We took a boat ride through the swamp and saw a large amount of gators.  Afterwards, we took a train ride through the gardens.  I have never seen anything so green and beautiful.
Ian was also able to go to the petting zoo.  This place had all the animals that were indigenous to this area and most of them the kids were able to pet.

Travels to Charleston Part 4

On Friday, we were able to go to Fort Sumter.  This is the fort where the Civil War (war of the states) officially started.  We took a boat out to the little 2.5 acre island.
The National Park service has reconstructed the fort but it really does not look anything like what it looked like when it was originally attacked.  They also had a small museum that still had the original flag that was flying when the fort was attacked.  It was a lot of fun to see and the boat ride was nice as well.

Travels to Charleston Part 3

Thursday we were able to go to a museum on the Citadel campus.  It was wonderful and showed the history of the Citadel since the war of the states.  It also showed the role the Citadel played in each of the wars.  Even in the Iraq and Afghanistan, the Citadel has had about 15 causalities from their alumni.   That is quite a lot considering they do not have a huge student population.
Later in the day we took met my dad's friend and his two children and attended the aquarium.  What a fun thing to do and Ian adored it.

Travels to Charleston Part 2

The food in Charleston was ABSOLUTELY amazing.  There are 180 restaurants in downtown Charleston and they all seem to do fairly well.  I guess the people in Charleston like to eat out. We did quite a bit of eating out but our favorite place was Monza.  This was a little Italian place with some of the best pizza around.  We went the first night and last night we were in Charleston because we liked it so much.
The second day we were in Charleston we went to the beach called Isle of the Palm.  The  beach was wonderful and so nice.   Ian loved the beach so much we went three times before the end of our journey.  We purchased a pail, shovel and some other toys at the dollar store for Ian to play with on the beach.
Side note: The first day at the beach our camera got some sand in it and we were unable to use it again until the end of the trip... At least my dad had his camera so we were still able to get some pictures.

Putting sunscreen on Ian

Beth playing with the shovel (she ended up breaking it)

Sweet Boy

These next few pictures are of the beach at sunset. So beautiful!

Travels to Charleston Part 1

Our little family was able to take the opportunity to visit my dad in Charleston while he is doing a one year temporary Mark W. Clark chair position at the Citadel.  Charleston was beautiful and wonderful! I am really glad we got to spend an entire week there!
We were a little nervous about the plane ride with two children under two but we were able to get to South Carolina with very few hiccups.  We rented a van because my sister was joining us too and we were not able to fit everyone in my dad's sports car.  We arrived at midnight on Monday and my poor children were so tired.  But that did not mean that Ian wasn't going to test out the wood floors in the house my dad is renting.  It was on the Citadel's campus.  Citadel is one of the only University that has faculty housing on campus.  This house was pretty old and had 17 foot ceilings. It was really nice.
The next morning we went for a walk around the Citadel's campus.  The grounds were very beautiful and had a lot of military items on display.