Greenville, SC is where my heart is. Our last visit was over Thanksgiving, and it was amazing. We really enjoyed getting to see it during the beginning of Winter. We stayed at the
Hampton Inn & Suites which is centrally located Downtown, and just steps away from
Falls Park on the Reedy.
On this trip we ate, played, hiked, and checked out the sites. We visited Paris Mountain, for the first time this trip, and it was awesome! The view of the lake was just stunning against the mountain background.
The kiddos also got to Ice Skate for the first time on this trip. I do believe this was their favorite thing from the whole trip. I was very upset that I couldn't join them. I was scheduled to have knee surgery a week after this trip.
Poor me. Oh well, I got Brad to do it with them instead. By the way, he still hasn't forgiven me. Hehe.
On this trip, we also went back to
Jones Gap State Park. Now this park isn't actually in Greenville, but about 45 minutes away. Trust me it is worth the drive. Here is a tip for you, get there dang early! There are a very limited amount of parking spaces. So, as the park fills to capacity the rangers have you wait outside the gate, in your vehicle, you can get out and explore a bit while waiting, until a car leaves the park. This has happened to us both times we have visited, each time we have waited 30-60 minutes. Again, I promise it is worth it. Don't leave before you visit the park. Also, they don't rush you out of the park once you're in to make room for vehicles.
So what did we do inside the park? We hiked! Now I will tell you the trail we did was hard. I should not have done it with my bad knee. We did the Rainbow trail, it leads to the waterfall. The trail is 4.4 miles round trip, my
Jawbone Up said we gained 2000 (sorry I don't remember the exact number) or so feet of elevation. There are a ton of steps you have to go up, and the higher you go the narrower the path gets. That made us super nervous having both kids with us who are 7 and 9 yrs old. They were troopers though they didn't really complain. It took us four hours to complete. Phew! That was hard. Here is the beautiful waterfall. It wasn't as full since it hadn't rained.
We also went back to the
Greenville Zoo. It is one of my favorite Zoo's I have been too, my top favorite is the San Diego Zoo. It is a smaller Zoo, but I really think that helps you see everything without rushing through the exhibits. There is also a wonderful park just outside of the Zoo that we actually walked to from out hotel, the path is part of the Swamp Rabbit Trail.
Let's talk food! Our hotel served breakfast so that was taken care of. Leaving lunch and dinner that needed to be taken care of. We packed lunched stuff, so ultimately we just had to figure out dinner each night.When we first got into town the day before Thanksgiving it was around 7 pm. We were starving, so we ate at Bellacino's Pizza & Grinders. We ordered pizza and it was really good. Thanksgiving day food was hard to come by. We don't have any family in Greenville, so we were on our own. There were plenty of buffets available, but they were anywhere from $19-$30 a person. We just couldn't afford that. We ended up eat at Jack 'n' the Box, it was good and the employee's were very friendly. We kindly joked with them and apologized that they had to work on the holiday. Another food stop we made was at
Nose Dive we passed it several times while walking down Main Street and it just smelled so good.
I ordered the Fried Chicken and Waffles, and Brad ordered the Pang Curry Poutine. I was not a huge fan of the chicken and waffles, it was very under seasoned. Brad thought the curry was good it just wasn't quite right to him. We ended up switching plates. Overall we had a good experience.
We had so much fun on this trip and we can't wait to go back. Here are a few more of our favorite pictures. Thanks for reading. I look forward to sharing more of our trips with you soon.
