We visited my (Todd's) parents in South Carolina on Friday and Saturday, a perfectly lovely yet unfortunately slightly abbreviated trip because nothing ever quite goes as planned, does it? Although the p's have retired in Aiken, SC, we chose Greenville as our rendezvous city which, although quite charming, is not exactly a travel mecca.Mumurings of potential problems with our 7pm Thursday United Airlines flight (United stinks!) began 24 hours earlier with forecasts of high winds, scattered strong thunderstorms or even a possible tornado on Thursday afternoon. Nontheless, we diligently packed and then suffered the now 75-minute el trip to O'Hare on Thursday afternoon (already terrible service on the dilapidated CTA worsens daily), our arrival coinciding exactly with our flight cancellation. For kicks, we stayed at O'Hare's ratty and overcrowded Terminal 2 for a few hours, playing around in some long lines and temporarily rebooking on a woefully delayed flight to 100-mile distant Columbia, SC, before regaining our senses, throwing in the towel and returning home to fly Friday morning instead. By the way, the forecasted apocalyptic weather never did hit Chicago.
After finally arriving Friday afternoon with rain also having just passed through Greenville, we enjoyed a perfectly lovely time. As the beneficiaries of some local restaurant tips from Stephanie's sister's friend who grew up in Greenville, we drove straight to lunch at Henry's Smokehouse, a real-deal SC barbeque joint with awesome pulled pork and mustard-based hot BBQ sauce (my favorite). Proceeding downtown to the Hyatt Regency, we continued chatting all together in our corner suite room, grazing later on the delicious amenity cheese and fruit plate and wine (the perks of Steph's employment never end, do they?). My impending premature--and probably only temporary :-( --retirement in Switzerland appears to have nothing on my parents' retired life in Aiken, they're apparently having a ball there.
Not quite sated on wine and cheese, we toured around the cute downtown arriving first at a wine bar for a glass apiece and later beginning dinner with a cheese-fondue inspired starter at upscale southern-style restaurant Soby's. Dinner was quite good, especially the shrimp and grits, crab cakes and caramel flan (we shared a little).
Steph and I passed out early Friday night from the slow but steady exhaustion that seems to be creeping up on us closer to our move date. The next morning, a beautiful sunny Saturday, we capped off our trip with another short stroll downtown to a little cafe called Coffee Underground for breakfast. From there it was back to airport, but not before briefly celebrating my parents' stroke of luck with an unexpected Hyatt room opening Saturday night, allowing them to stay and enjoy another day in Greenville.
Meanwhile, Steph and I were anticipating another blowout evening Saturday with a big going-away party planned with our Chicago core of friends (that's the big third party so far, if you're still counting)...
1 comment:
We just wanted to go on record by saying that Greenville has now been added to our illustrious list of great little southern towns that we will be returning to over and over again. Thank you for introducing it to us. After we got you back to the airport (we had so few hours together), we returned to Main Street, shopped, had lunch at the French Café, dinner at Bistro Europa across the street, and then, just because we hadn’t had our quota of calories for the day, we returned to Soby’s for an Irish coffee and another slice of that heavenly whipped caramel pie. Saturday evening was beautiful, the steel drums were playing, the revelers were out and about, and it all put Dad in such a good mood, that he sprung for that romantic carriage ride I had mentioned. So the evening was complete! It’s a shame we didn’t have more time with you guys because you would have loved Reedy River Falls (a very neat area) and a great shop called Carolina Triathlon. But it all pales a bit because in 10 short days you will be on your way to Zurich, Switzerland and will be sorely missed by those of us who love you so much! Congrats on selling the house and the car and we’re counting the days until May 2008!
Post a Comment