Last Thursday, Daniel gave me a call from work and asked me if I would mind if he made some plans for the weekend. We haven’t really worked on our house since November, but Daniel rarely takes the initiative to make plans, so I said sure. Our house will eventually get finished and I love surprises and going places.
This morning, I am sitting on the porch of our condo at the Disney Resort in Hilton Head. I am looking out over the marsh and the rain is falling and the thunder is rolling. It is our last day here and for me it is a perfect end to our weekend.
Daniel and I are not your typical Hilton Head visitors. This is our third visit to the island and we do our own thing and love it. We don’t golf and we are not big beach people but we love the relaxed feeling and the lack of commercialism of the island. Another thing we love is the 50+ miles of bike paths.
On this particular visit we tried to do things in a more “local” fashion. We found restaurants that the locals frequent, spent several hours biking, took a nap on the beach, took a long walk on the beach, played checkers, visited a local coffee house and took advantage of cable television.
Daniel and I are definitely learning to appreciate each other and to compromise. My idea of a vacation is to “go, go, go” the entire time while Daniel appreciates just relaxing. I think we accomplished both. We have enjoyed sleeping in and being lazy while also spending time biking over 20 miles.
Two years ago, on our first trip to Hilton Head, we rented beach bikes and road all over the island. Daniel convinced me to ride over this huge bridge, which I agreed to. At that time I had not ridden a bike in over 10 years and beach bikes do not have gears so it was a REALLY difficult ride.
Yesterday we rode over that same bridge with our mountain bikes, which have gears. I have also been riding my bike pretty frequently in the last year. It turned out to be a decent workout and a lot of fun to ride over that same bridge. Having gears made a huge difference in my experience.
Our eating experience this weekend has been great. Friday night we found a “local” restaurant, The Sea Shack. It reminds me of Bobby’s in Searcy only they serve great seafood. For about $10 each, we got massive plates of seafood. I had blackened fish and shrimp with to-die-for mac and cheese, fries and hush puppies. The blackened fish and shrimp was awesome but very spicy. My mouth and lips were on fire the whole time. Thank goodness for that mac and cheese to tone it done. The mac and cheese was the best I have EVER had! Daniel had grilled Tilapia with fries, apple sauce and hush puppies – also an excellent choice. The next time we come we are definitely going back – you can’t beat the prices, the amount of food, quality of the food or atmosphere.
For lunch yesterday, we stopped at a small café while we were on our bike ride. The Market Street Café had a lot of Greek items on the menu. We enjoyed outdoor dining and I had a Souvlakia with lamb while Daniel had the Greek salad with chicken. Both were really good and we enjoyed sitting outside with other vacationers.
Last night we ate at the New York Pizza restaurant. This is a good place for large groups. The pizza was fairly the good except we were a little disappointed because the middle of it was soggy.
After dinner we ran by Java Joe’s where I tried a Hazelnut Latte – I would definitely recommend this coffee house. They have a variety of joe as well as liquer-coffee and wi-fi. Their desserts are supposed to be really good. Also they are close to the beach, so we took our coffee and walked down to the beach and enjoyed a walk at dusk.
At the beach we saw a group of girls dressed up in crazy 80’s prom dresses. When we left the beach we saw a van that had “I Love the 80’s” and other crazy things written on it – I am pretty sure this was a bachelor-ette party. What a great theme – they looked like they were having a good time being crazy.
Yesterday, at lunch, we sat by a group of girls about our age. It really made me wish that I had girlfriends to go on a weekend getaway with or better, other couples to go on a getaway with. We have done that twice – once with Angela & Robert and Mark & Carolina to Hilton Head and once with 3 other couples from our Life Group to Snowshoe. Both of those trips were so much fun and I really wish we could do that type of thing more often.
The best way we could end this trip would be to find a local pancake house - eating out for breakfast is one of my favorite things.
It is so peaceful right now. The rain is letting up and the fog has rolled out. It is still overcast, but we are leaving today so that is okay. My only disappointment is our camera. It stopped working for an unknown reason yesterday while we were at the beach, so we have limited pictures - that is ok because we have pictures from other trips and I am sure we will be back.
