Columbia, South Carolina
Day 1

This is a trip where we’re heading to Charleston, SC to cruise on the Carnival Ecstasy. We always like to head down a few days prior to our cruise so we can check out the city and see and do things. We want our kids to experience all that they can and we want to extend our vacation. 

We checked the boys out of school on Wednesday and headed down to Columbia, South Carolina. We wanted to get closer to Charleston and we usually pick a random place and just go. We got to Columbia, South Carolina that evening and checked into our hotel. We unloaded and then went to dinner at UNO‘s. This is one of our favorite places to eat and I was happy there was a location in Columbia. The food was good but the service was just okay. It wasn’t my favorite UNO’s but it wasn’t bad either. It was pretty cool to be in Richland County SC. Where is Kevin Lawrence, Chris Mastriani and Danny Brown? Here’s looking at you #LivePD. (LivePD was an awesome reality TV show that came on for 6 hours every weekend before the cancel culture idiots took over) After we ate dinner, we went back to our hotel to rest. The boys had a long day at school then we had a good drive down to South Carolina. The only place we hit traffic was around Charlotte at 5 o’clock going through uptown but that was it. No big deal. 

Columbia, South Carolina
Day 2

We had read great things about the Riverbanks Zoo & Garden in Columbia, so we decided to go here for the day. This was an excellent zoo. It was under construction but I never let that factor in my reviews because construction is a sign of progress.

It was a clean zoo, lots of neat animals, great staff and the price was great. We decided to spend most of the day here since we had nothing else planned to do.

At the end of the day, we hit the road and headed on down to Charleston. We had a great time in Columbia. It’s not somewhere we’d make a destination for a vacation but definitely somewhere I wouldn’t mind stopping along the route as we go somewhere.

 

Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston, Day 1 After we left the Riverbanks Zoo & Garden in Columbia, we hopped