BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: HOLY CITY EDITION

SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

Today was the day that Steve didn't actually have to work!  Yay!

We got all our stuff together and headed out to our first destination.  We'd looked at a map and found a place called Sullivan's Island.  There wasn't a whole lot of stuff there, but we figured that we'd still take a look around.  It was a nice drive out there, and we finally got to drive out over the big bridge.  I don't particularly like driving over bridges like that.  I know that they are made by smart engineers and everything, but engineers can have bad days.  Eeeeeeesh.  Anyway, we drove through the lovely little town and wound up driving through what looked like a residential area.  We were going to go out to the beach, but we felt a little weird parking along people's houses to get to it, so we drove until we found a tiny little park with what looked to be a public beach.  It was really beautiful and tiny, and it was on the edge of everything, so we got out and walked a bit.  It wasn't a place where you could go swimming or anything.  There were signs that warned of a dangerous riptide, but it was a beautiful place to walk.  The sand was pearl gray and it sparkled!  I picked up some shells and looked around a bit.  We didn't stay for long, since it looked like it might rain, but we stayed long enough to see a wedding party come and take some pictures.  I loved it there.  How nice would it be to live in a place like that?

We left there and drove to the next place which was called Folly Beach.  Folly Beach is much more like the beach towns that I'm used to.  It wasn't as nice as Sullivan's Island, and it wasn't huge by any stretch of the imagination, but there were shops and restaurants, and there were hotels and beach houses all over the place.  We parked the car and walked around a bit.  We walked through the shops first, which I have to say, had some hilarious merchandise.  I love looking at the cheesy stuff that gets sold in tourist shops.  I don't buy it, but I love looking at it!  We got hungry while doing that, and we kind of stumbled across a very out-of-nowhere Irish Pub and we decided to stop and eat there.  It seemed oddly out of place, to be honest, and except for the size of the building, it was very much like the pubs we saw while we were in Dublin.  I thought that was kind of neat.

After lunch, we moved on to the city pier.  We walked up, and a very friendly man stopped us and told us all about the stuff we could see there.  I liked him immediately, and he seemed to love his job, so I mentally adopted him.  : )  Steve decided he didn't want to walk the entire length of the pier, so I left him at the tables, and I walked to the end.  It was really cool!  There were a lot of people fishing, and some guy had just caught the biggest fish I'd ever seen outside of an aquarium.  When he pulled it up, everyone came over to see it.  I don't know what kind it was, but it was so pretty that I kind of hate that he caught it!  It was gold and about four feet long!  I didn't stick around, though, because I wanted to go down to the beach before the rain started for real.

We walked down to the shore, and one thing I noticed was that the sand was half white and half black (which I thought was weird) and that instead of shells, the shoreline was covered in chunks of dead coral.  Huh.  We walked a bit and picked up some shells, but we could tell it was really about to rain and we didn't want to get soaked before getting back in the car.  I got to see the coast, at least!  I wonder why the sand is black.  I always though that had something to do with volcanoes.  Oh, well.  I got my shells and sand, and we went back to the hotel.

I had every intention of cleaning up and going back out, but once I got back to the hotel, I hit a wall and I hit it HARD.  I had gotten a shower (because of frickin' course I did. I've had a million showers since I've been here!!!!) and I had decided to reorganize my luggage to making packing easier, and I don't know if it was a blood sugar thing, or if all the walking and irregular sleeping and things just decided to pile up on me all at once, but I went down.  I didn't faint, exactly, but I had to lie down and not move for a bit.  My body just said "Nope."  I was pissed.  Here it was, my last night here, and I was lying in a hotel room and not doing anything!  However, sometimes you have to listen to your body, I guess.  I think it must have been a low blood sugar thing.  We finally decided to just forgo going anywhere else and just ordered room service again.  Heh, it was kind of funny, actually.  We didn't want much for dinner, so we both ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and fries off of the children's menu.  I don't know if room service people mind if adults order off of the kid's menu or not, but we didn't care and they didn't know we didn't have kids up here.  We had also found Star Wars: A New Hope playing on TV, so of course you know we were watching that.  It only occurred to me later how silly we must have looked to the waitress, to have been in our room, watching Star Wars and ordering grilled cheese sandwiches. :) At least we weren't wearing footie pajamas.  I mean, I didn't even bring mine!

I felt better after we ate and I finished the packing stuff I wanted to.  Now I'm sad that we're leaving tomorrow. I really love it here, even with the sweating.