Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Beach Bumming

What's one of the perks of living in the south?  A short drive to the beach! I LOVE the beach.  I love the sand, the surf, the crabs, the seagulls, the shells, the sound of the ocean, the blaring sun, the cliche, neon, filled with junk "one on every corner" souvenir shops.  But most of all I love people watching.  I love that some of these people actually tried their bathing suits on in a store, looked in the mirror and thought to themselves, "yeah, I look good in this".  Shameful, but I digress.  Well maybe that's not my absolute favorite thing to do, that would be making happy memories with my family.

This past weekend, Cory, the kids and I went to Myrtle Beach, SC to meet up with some old friends Mike and Kristy and their 4 year old Nicholas.  We sunned, we ate and we drank.  Here is a little overview of it all.


The first awesome thing we saw was a Delorean.  How often do you get to see one of those?

We were only going to be in Myrtle for 2 days so we had to make the most of it.  We hit the sand first thing, with a stocked cooler of beer and juice boxes.  After baking for a few hours we headed to dinner to one of our favorite restaurants, The Flamingo Grill.  Now, Myrtle is full of chain places to eat but we don't subscribe to that.  We prefer the family owned, eclectic places with awesome food.  It was (Yes!) happy hour when we got there.  I, of course, sampled the martini menu, and Cory, of course, had beer.



When vacationing near the ocean you just have to take advantage of the fresh seafood.  I started with a cup of She Crab soup.  For those of you not familiar, She Crab is a thick, rich bisque-like soup finished with sherry.  The names comes from the fact that it's only supposed to be made with female crabs, which today doesn't always stand true.  I make sure to try it in every SC restaurant.  This one was in my top 5 favorites.  We all shared a big ol' fried plate of calamari, crab cake and fried lobster bites.   For my entree I had a half portion of their Scallop Pasta which was super flavorful and plenty of food after that decadent soup.



Appetizer

 
Scallop Pasta




She Crab

After filling our bellies with delicious local seafood and a couple cocktails, we retired to our friends hotel room to take in the 16th floor view.
Nicholas & Quinny


 
Mike & Cory
Kristy and Me
The next day we hit the hotel pool where surprisingly there were many other activities besides swimming.  The kids kept themselves busy playing a game of giant chess, and Quinny not only had a few shallow kid areas to play but we also got to tye-dye a little canvas beach bag for her.

No trip to Myrtle would be complete without a stroll around Broadway at the Beach, a big ol' pier around a man-made lake with every shop, restaurant and tourist trap you could imagine.






On our departure day we had promised the kids they could spend their "vacation money" on something and they chose to take a ride on a trampoline jumper.  Abby was the only one who managed a flip - see pic.




I also got a few quick videos of the kids taking their turns: (Sorry they're sideways!)









1 comment:

  1. Hoooray, you're back! Looks like a fun trip! Love that your cooler was filled with Beer and Juice Boxes, too funny! Glad you had a good time, and ate yummy seafood and enjoyed the sun!

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