Bargains

We're back - sunnied, relaxed and renewed from a South Carolina getaway. I won't recap every detail because frankly, our photos speak more than I could describe in words (I hope to post those soon, maybe before the weekend ends), especially since we spent quite a fraction of our time just sunning on the beach, reading and chatting. We left Laguardia on time last Sunday, even landing early, and Craig's parents picked us up within twenty minutes of our retrieval of our checked bags. The condo in which we stayed for the week was actually in North Myrtle Beach, which is about a twenty minute drive from Myrtle Beach. We met up with Kara, Ben and Brady and found the condo easily enough. It was really nice - spacious with three bedrooms and a large kitchen and living area and two full bathrooms. Brady is growing so quickly - he's on the brink of both walking and talking - he was such a well-behaved baby through the week, too! He fussed very few times. Anyway, we all got lots of sun and enjoyed being together. Kara and Ben beat us more often than I care to admit at Scrabble and even once at Trivial Pursuit (in fairness to us, Ben's got his own Scrabble rule with regard to existing words on the board and we applied the rule and it contributed greatly to his wins! Ben!) and we ate well, while way too much. Craig and I drifted off a few times - went to eat lunch on Main Street at a place called Duffy's Seafood Shack, drank a couple of beers at a beachside open air patio one night before dinner with the group at Greg Norman's Australian Steakhouse and spent some quiet time alone at the beach the last day, too. Overall it is difficult to vacation with a group but only in the sense that everyone's paces are unique, particularly with baby Brady's schedule in play. But I don't think there was a moment where any particular one of us wasn't content with anyone else's pace or schedule. We grilled out at the condo community's grills a couple of nights in lieu of going out to eat. We ate breakfast every morning at the condo - toast, cereal, fresh fruit, juice and coffee - one morning we all pitched in for an eggs and potato breakfast, and another morning Kara and Joann made superior waffles (I can't give away their trade secrets but let me say, as a non-regular waffle eater, these were fantastic and completely fat-free, to boot!) Wednesday, to divide all the beach time nicely, we traveled to Charleston, which is about a two hour drive from Myrtle Beach. It is a quaint little place with New Orleans French Quarter-ish architecture and blooms and foliage. We took a trolley in the morning but walked the rest of the day, just strolling and observing, really. To wrap up our charming Southern adventure, we drove to the Magnolia Plantation where we split into separate groups - Kara and Ben took Brady to the petting zoo and through the garden, Craig and I walked part of the garden with Ed and Joann and then they took the house tour while Craig and I sought alligators at the swamp. Unfortunately, we saw nothing but a moss-covered turtle - later we learned that Kara and Ben encountered two gators just hanging out on the path in the garden! Kara was pretty freaked out but snapped photos to show us. Then on our way back to the condo, just Ed, Joann, Craig and I stopped to eat seafood in Murrell's Inlet (outside of Myrtle Beach) and the weather took a spotty turn - hard rains, temperatures dropped into the 50's! Morning was more of the same only less rain - sky stuffed with clouds, cool temps and so forth. Ed, Joann, Craig and I drove to a pier in Myrtle Beach to walk the length and view the shore. Craig and I snapped stormy ocean photos and we even saw a woman catch a baby shark. He was maybe a foot long and her husband disengaged the thing from the hook and pitched it awkwardly back into the water but I can safely say that was the closest to a shark I've ever been and hopefully the closest I will ever be! For lunch we stopped at Broadway at the Beach, a large boardwalk complex with shops and restaurants - we endured a 20-minute wait for Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville - the food was pretty decent and my Ruby Red Margarita was good, too. Then Craig and I headed off on our own to walk the perimeter of the complex. We indulged in a vanilla iced latte from the KISS cofffeeshop (weird!) and he ate pistacchio ice cream on a cone and I tried a Kahlua Chocolate Truffle from a chocolatier. By late afternoon, the weather shifted back to what we'd had in the days prior - bright sunshine and 80's temps, so Craig and I caught a last hour on the beach by ourselves at that time. The whole week was really nice - it was nice to be away from the realities of the everyday, for sure. We weren't overly impressed with 17, the main road that runs the length of the Grand Strand - huge warehouse type beach junk stores called Wings, Bargains and Waves, one after another, lining the strip. But the beach itself was very clean and warm.
a red bridge I loved at the Magnolia Plantation...
another bridge Craig liked at the Garden...
stormy Atlantic waves on a South Carolina morning...

The morning we flew out, Craig received a missed call from Ben as we rode with Ed to the Myrtle Beach International Airport. Craig tried to return the call but didn't get to, really, until we had checked in. Ben informed Craig that the breaking news on tv was that a construction crane had collapsed at 91st and 1st Avenue in Manhattan. This news shocked us both considerably, especially given the number of times we can be found walking across that intersection to pick up miscellaneous items at the Duane Reade on that corner. We hurried to the bar in the airport to order a couple of coffees and watch as CNN unfolded the story. I kept hugging Craig because I felt so spared and blessed that we weren't home or near when this happened. It's so strange, because a number of times I've worried about that construction site and the crane. Normally I wouldn't feel unneccessarily concerned, but crane incidents have occurred too many times in recent construction history to not cause me some alarm. Luckily for us, our apartment building (we're right around the corner from this occurrence) was left standing and unharmed. But had the crane fallen in a different direction, I'm not sure I could say the same thing. How scary...anyway, our cab driver dropped us, after landing back in New York, at 96th and 2nd so that we weren't sending him into the chaos. News trucks, NYPD and FDNY were everywhere, combing the debris for casualties, crawling all over to protect neighborhood residents and to cover the story. It was wild - and a detective even knocked on our door and asked me if we had seen or heard anything. Luckily for us, I told him, we had just returned from a trip so no, we heard and saw nothing. This hits, so to speak, so close to home. Scary. This morning I heard nothing but helicopters for the first few hours after I woke up. Oh, we've been spared and blessed, I can say that much.*We saw the Raconteurs last night, which was incredible, and tonight we're meeting my friend Laura who is in town from London for sushi. Today we're sifting through stuff, organizing, unpacking, unwinding...we move in less than one month! It will be here soon. And Monday, it's back to the grueling grind. The best part of vacation is the vacation itself - the worst part is the hard reality to follow! But it's what affords us time away, which is the optimist's approach. And so it goes!