Charleston

My latest road trip was to beautiful Charleston, the oldest city in South Carolina. It has many preserved historical buildings. We enjoyed driving down Chalmers Street, the longest of eight cobblestone streets in the city near the Cooper River. The old houses looked very interesting and some have been painted bright colors. The Old Slave Mart is also on Chalmers Street. Slaves were auctioned-off there in the 1800's.

We had to visit the Isle of Palms, the beach where Dear John,a movie with handsome Channing Tatum and Amanda Seifried, was filmed. It was beautiful, sunny weather, not hot enough for swimming, but really pleasant and we spent some enjoyable time on the beach. Before going to Savannah, we moved on to Folly Beach and enjoyed the beautiful sunset

Savannah

Our first stop in Savannah, Georgia, was Tybee Island, where Last Song, with Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth, was filmed. Unfortunately, the pier on the beach was closed. (Also, the one at Isle of Palms was closed. I don’t get it why they have piers and they are not open.)

As I was leaving the beach, looking at my phone, suddenly I heard someone calling my name. “Karolina?” In my head I was thinking “Who on Earth could possibly know me here?” Being on a trip to Savannah, where nobody knows me and also in United States where few people know me, I hear someone calling my name. Am I just hallucinating??? But then again, “Karolina?” I turned around and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Susana from Spain, my Gwinnett Technical College (Lawrenceville, GA) ESL classmate. She lives in Dacula, GA, went to Savannah for a trip, on the same day as me, on the same beach at the same time! What a coincidence. Isn’t that funny? In my last article about my New Orleans trip, I mentioned meeting someone with family in my home country, Slovakia. I have these kinds of coincidences in my life.

Two rules that I learned on this trip:

• Always check for your wallet before you go! More than hour from Atlanta, I realized it was missing and we had to go back for it — found it lying in a child car seat.

• For non-American people (that was us), don’t ever travel on Thanksgiving. When we imagined that we were going to spend the night dancing, we didn’t know we’d be walking in empty city, where everything is closed. Fortunately, Black Friday shopping started, so we could go at least on a shopping spree. My first time experiencing this night shopping was really new to me and kind of crazy :-)