3rd Wedding Anniversary Trip Days 1 and 2: Charleston, SC

(Sign in a cemetery frequented by ghost tours..hilarious)

This past weekend Ryan and I drove the 4 hours from Jacksonville to Charleston, SC to begin our celebration of 3 years of marriage.  Our trip was to be 2/3 adventure and 1/3 luxury and relaxation. It was a beautiful and peaceful drive and we arrived at Charleston’s Notso Hostel ready for a weekend of history, good food and live music.

We stayed for 2 nights in the Hemingway room of the Notso Hostel’s annex building just a few blocks away from their main building. Having stayed at The Beehive’s annex building in Rome, we remembered that this was the best way to take advantage of the price of a hostel without having to put up with the sometimes frat house atmosphere J Both the hostel and the annex were beautiful old Southern houses in an eclectic neighborhood near King Street and they were clean and decorated with modern touches. Our room was on the small side (room only for a bed, bookshelf and closet) but this turned out to be a blessing as it kept us out of our bedroom and out and about in the city. I would recommend this hostel to anyone looking to spend about ¼ of what you’d spend on a hotel this close to the main downtown area. (Tip: You can feel the springs through the thin mattress but if you put the down comforter under the fitted sheet, it is perfectly comfortable for a few nights if you’re not too particular. We meant to bring our own pillows and forgot…you may want to remember as their pillows are quite flat…but for $70/night, who’s complaining?)

There are two people who live at the annex and care for it, both were extremely hospitable and kind and their little dog, Saatchi, was the sweetest, most friendly dog! She greeted us at the door like the little ambassador of the Notso Hostel and showed us to our room to make sure we were comfortable. The other guests of the hostel were considerate and quiet…I have yet to have a bad hostel experience and part of this might be research but mostly I think that hostel people are generally good people.

(Closed for Business by the "fireplace")

After changing clothes, we made our way over to King Street to explore Charleston. There are several very expensive restaurants catering to a wealthy clientele, but if you’re looking to make your vacation budget stretch, there are several options for that as well. We started at Closed for Business restaurant/bar for a drink and some fried potato skins. It has a quirky atmosphere similar to The Lodge in downtown Orlando and filled to the brim with hipsters. Ryan tried a new gluten-free beer called “Omission” that he loved and I had a Crispin cider on the rocks…never tried it on ice before but that’s how they served it and it was very refreshing.

(Salut!)

We then wandered all the way down King Street and over to Market Street for dinner and drinks at the bar of Mad River Bar and Grille. They had live music and while the food wasn’t amazing, it was decent and inexpensive for the area. The bartenders were friendly and one in particular befriended us and made a number of tasty shots for us in honor of our anniversary. I wasn’t appreciating those shots the next day but at the time it made our night special.

(Biking in Charleston)

The next day we rented bikes from the Notso Hostel for $15/bike/day plus a $5/bike deposit for the bike lock. If you rent a bike from Notso, don’t be turned off by the rust and general un-prettiness of these bikes…they work just fine and for $15/day, right by your lodging….it is a pretty good deal! There are other options for bicycle rental in Charleston if you’d rather but these ones worked just fine.

On our bikes we were able to visit the Saturday Farmer’s Market, which is HUGE and has vendors selling everything from local produce to gluten free gnocchi to local brie and handcrafted items. From there it was a short bike ride to the Historic City Market, which is filled with vendors selling benne wafers and sweetgrass baskets in addition to the usual artsy items. Since we weren’t interested in paying $50-500 for a sweetgrass basket, it wasn’t long before we made our way through the City Market and on to The Battery, a seawall and walking area that overlooks the Charleston harbor and is bordered by “stately antebellum homes” (according to Wikipedia).

 (Stately antebellum home)

Adjacent to The Battery is Waterfront Park, which has a lovely pier and several benches and gardens that provide the perfect background for a picnic or some gelato from Belgian Gelato. Try the pistachio!

(Sugar+Brandy= JOY)

If you have rented bikes from the main house of the Notso Hostel, on the walk back to the Annex, there is a really cool restaurant with a courtyard area, live music and delicious food called Fuel. The musician they had while we were there sounded like the guy from Blues Traveler and the service was great.

If you bring a bottle of champagne (our tradition is a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, since that is what Ryan brought when he proposed to me on the beach), you can enjoy a glass of it on the front porch swing of the Annex and enjoy people watching as you watch college students, families and couples strolling by on their way to the busy King Street.

Later on, if you’re looking for live music, it’s a pleasant walk to The Brick, which usually has live music starting at 10:30 pm. We saw the Swingin Richards and were singing along with them as they covered everything from Adele to Johnny Cash.

The next day, we enjoyed a cup of coffee in the living room before checking out and hitting the road…..that will be in the next post! 

Paris and Rome, here we come!!

Ryan and I decided to join his mom and sisters on a trip to Paris and Rome in May, even though it's quite a bit out of our budget! We decided that the memories we will make with them are priceless and worth the splurge ($900/person to fly to Paris...ouch). This doesn't mean, however, that we will go willy nilly (who says willy nilly??) with our budget.

Planning a vacation on a budget isn't exactly the easiest thing to do when you're planning on visiting two of the most expensive cities possible and they're both pretty far away from sunny Florida. Really, visiting the main cities of any country are going to cost you more than staying in the small villages and towns where prices are cheaper or visiting a country much closer to your own (For example: our flights to Honduras in 2010 were about $250/each, plus the hostels were like $10-20/night). And since it's a big vacation for us, we also don't want to miss out on things just for the sake of saving money...in other words, we don't want to be cheapskates! We want to have a good time. So, how can we do the things we want to do and not deplete our savings completely?? I'll tell you how we're doing it, step by step:

1. Stay with friends or in a hostel OR buy a package deal

We are super lucky to have friends that live in Paris and have (graciously) offered to let us stay with them. Not only will we be able to spend time with friends and hear about Paris from a local's point of view but this is also a huge money saver. The only cost for lodging will be a nice thank you gift to them...which, I assure you, is quite a bit less than 4 nights in even a Parisian hostel.

In Rome, we have found an adorable hostel online, The Beehive, where for about $100/night, we will have a shared kitchen and a clean, well reviewed place to lay our heads not too far from the train station and the hotel where Ryan's mom and sisters are staying.

I'm usually against package deals and tours because I feel that, overall, you can usually save money if you're willing to stay in a hostel or some other form of cheap lodging. In Paris and Rome....hostels are expensive! Instead of $10-30/night, you will pay $100+/night for even the most homely of rooms (The exception being, of course, if you stay on the edge of the city or in a nearby town).

The deal that the in-laws got, $1500/person, includes airfare to Paris and from Paris to Rome PLUS lodging in both cities for 10 nights. Not bad when you consider that the rooms they're staying in go for $300-400/night normally. We will still save money because we're staying with friends for half of the trip, but otherwise, it would have been cheaper to get the package deal when you factor in the flight from Paris to Rome and the 11 nights lodging.


2. How to pay for the trip?

We have decided that, rather than clean out our savings and stocks, we will lower our student loan payments for a few months. We're still paying at least the minimum, but normally we pay 2.5 times the minimum to accelerate paying the debt off. It's not ideal but again, the memories of a family trip are worth the splurge (to us). I do not suggest using a credit card to pay for any trip! An expensive trip can quickly become an un-Godly mountain of debt when you factor in the interest you'll be paying on that trip.


Total spent so far (in USD):

Airfare for 2 from Orlando to Paris: $1800
Airfare for 2 from Paris to Rome (We love you RyanAir): $185
(We will hit up a total of 8 airports...direct flights cost more!)

Estimate for hostel in Rome: $440 (includes 2 Euro/day/person "tourist tax")
____________________________________
$2,425 (Made me a little nauseous to type that)

These are pretty much non-negotiables...our only opportunities to save money will be how we choose to get around the cities (bus vs. taxi), how we choose to eat (restaurants vs. utilizing grocery stores), places we choose to visit, etc.

Since we're still about a month away from going, that's as far as we've gotten! I'm still researching the best options for getting around the cities, where and what to eat and how to see the sights without paying too much. Any tips you have would be greatly appreciated! Let me know in the comments :)