Five years ago, our family went to Charleston, SC for spring break. We loved the area when we came that first time but we had stayed in Summerville back then in our very first Airbnb. It was about 35 minutes outside of Charleston, and although we enjoyed our stay, we had said that if we ever returned, we would love to try to stay more downtown. Well, since it was Melayna's senior year this year, Noel asked her where she wanted to go for spring break and since it may be one of her last vacations with us, she quickly said Charleston. With a destination decided now, I began looking for places to stay and I found a cute Airbnb that would fit our family right downtown, just blocks away from the College of Charleston and Rainbow Row.
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Since Charleston is about 14 hours from our house, we got up around 4:00 a.m. on Saturday the 4th, loaded up the car, and headed out. Melayna and Nolan quickly fell back to sleep and they slept for about three hours before they woke up just in time to catch the sunrise just outside of Cincinnati.
I think they both went right back to sleep though.
'Gotta love sisters who take pictures of you while you're sleeping and then send it to a family group chat that you aren't part of because you don't have a phone. LOL
'Just after we stopped for gas and made peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, we entered into Tennessee and we saw the scenery around us began to change. You can see the Smoky Mountains off in front of us.
An hour or two later, we drove into Asheville, NC where the Hurricane Helena flooded the area back in September of 2024. Much of the area is still trying to recover from that devastating flood, but we noticed that a lot of new hotels and apartment buildings had been built since we were down in the area last year. They are also doing a huge construction project on I40 where much of the highway was washed out, so traffic slowed down and we sort of "crawled" through the area. Finally we crossed over into South Carolina and although we still had three hours to go, we were getting pretty restless and stir-crazy. (Or maybe just plain craaaazy!)
Back windows were rolled down as far as they would go and there may or may not have been two passengers putting their heads out of the windows and singing at the top of their lungs.
We finally arrived in Charleston about 6:00 p.m. and then we were able to follow the directions to our Airbnb. It took a little maneuvering to get into the tight parking spot at the back of the house, but we were able to quickly unpack the car and move our things into the house before it got dark.
I took this picture once we had parked in the lot off of the street. Our house is the pink house on the left, but you can see the narrow alleyway that we had to back in and out of every time we needed to drive somewhere. Thankfully we were in walking distance of everything in the downtown area so we didn't need to drive anywhere on the days that we stayed in the city.
Many of the houses downtown were built narrow enough to only fit the width of one room and then they are longer so that you can put more houses on the long narrow lots. Our house was three stories and there was an apartment on each level, with the owner of the home living on the top floor.
We met Paul (the owner) on the very first day and he loves to just sit outside and smoke. (Both cigarettes...and meat). LOL This area didn't come with our rental but he explained that he built this area a couple of years ago and it's one of his favorite ways to spend his time. You can tell that they also love flowers as they had a lot of potted plants and flowers both inside and outside of our house.
Another view of the whole house from the parking area.
Our space would be on the first floor.
This was the view right outside the front door of our apartment. That green door led to the street. Although we could also access the street by the driveway, most of the houses in Charleston have one "main door" to their front porches and then separate entrances to all of the individual living spaces. In older days, if you wanted company you would open those porch doors and when you closed them, it was a sign that you wanted privacy. Everyone keeps them closed now.
And then a view of the house from the street. The house was lovingly called "The Pink House" on the Airbnb website and you can obviously see why, due to it's bright pink color.
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Here are photos of the inside of the house. Some of them were posted on the Airbnb website and some of them were taken by me at different points of our stay.
This was the front foyer, right when we walked in the door.
Off to the right was the bedroom. Both of the queen beds were in this front room and there was also a half bath off of this room. (This fresh clean picture was posted to the website. In actuality, it had a lot more art on the walls and several other chairs. I think there was even a surfboard stashed away in the corner.
To the left of the front foyer was the living room. Again, I took this picture from the website at the time of booking...
...and as you can see, they have decorated differently and added a few items since then.
They even had this useable turntable in the living room with two albums. We listened to the jazz albums more than once during our stay.
The living room also included this framed art of Keith Richards, who stayed here. Apparently he is a member of the Rolling Stones and he also left an autographed book on the coffee table.
Further back in the house behind the living room, was the kitchen. It was a small galley kitchen with only three chairs at the table. Once again, they had this one neat clean picture posted online but we found it decorated more and full of plants and other fun memorabilia when we arrived. ,
And then just behind the kitchen was the full bath.
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Since we hadn't found a grocery store yet, we settled in and then we quickly got online to search for somewhere to grab dinner. There are SO many food options in Charleston but we all decided that a good ole-fashioned smash burger would be the best way to start off our week, so we drove to a place on the other side of town that was called "Heavy's Barburger".
We quickly got seated outside and then we all enjoyed smash burgers and sweet potato fries along with tall bottles of water. The food was really good and it seemed to be a favorite among the college kids. We decided that it was a really good way to start off our week in Charleston.
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Since we had been driving all day and we were all pretty tired, we went back to the house, watched a little tv and then went to bed early. (Nolan watched tv with us in the bedroom but he decided that instead of sharing a bed with his sister, he would sleep on the couch all week)
... And just like that, Day One came to a close.
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