Maple and Bacon and Bourbon, Oh My!

This post is sponsored by Hyatt Place

If you follow me on social media, you probably saw that Hillary and I had a blast in Charleston this past weekend! A brand new Hyatt Place opened right downtown, and they invited me to stay for the weekend and eat, drink and explore my way around the city – and that we did!

We drove down on Friday – s.l.o.w.l.y. Some of the flooding had closed parts of I-95 so it took us 9 hours to get there. We were actually supposed to go last weekend, but the flooding kept us in Cville. Luckily most of downtown seemed fine, but we spoke with some locals who said the flooding was bad where they live.

After our long trip, we were welcomed enthusiastically with a cheese plate, cookies and some local beers by the Hyatt Place staff! These ladies were so friendly. In fact, everyone we encountered there was so nice.

The hotel is gorgeous, and everything is sparkly new.

The bathroom was impressive! Loved all the modern details.

We especially enjoyed the couch (which is also a pull out bed) in the room! It was nice to lounge somewhere other than the beds. 

After freshening up, we headed down to the Coffees to Cocktails Bar for a drink so we could make plans for the night. The bartender was so nice and told us some spots to visit.

He also gave us this coveted key to bypass the line at the club Trio. Apparently these are hard to come by! (And several people we met were impressed we had one). We felt cool!

The Hyatt Place is right at the top of King Street, so it was an easy walk to reach most everything we needed to get to. Didn’t move my car all weekend!

Our first stop was the highly recommended Prohibition, which was right down the street. Wish we’d had another meal so we could have tried the food there as well! The menu looked great. 

My Maple Bacon Old Fashioned was off the hook!!

We walked from Prohibition all the way down to Cru Cafe where we had late dinner reservations. Hillary read great things about Cru, and boy was our dinner good! Wine and bread started us off. 

We shared the fried green tomatoes topped with goat cheese and pork belly “croutons” all drizzled in a smoked tomato caramel. Amazing! One of the best apps I’ve ever had. 

Next up were buttermilk fried oysters with BBQ butter beans and arugula. To die for!!

And lastly – we split the duck entree which was topped with duck confit and served over a mushroom, green bean, potato hash and drizzled in a maple bourbon demi glaze. Everything in Charleston is maple-bacon-bourbon right now, and of course that made me really happy!! 

We walked back towards the hotel, which was over a mile (we walked 8 miles that night!) and knew we had to get Jeni’s Ice Cream for dessert!! We get this in pints at our grocery store, but this was my first visit to a Jeni’s shop. I had the salted peanut butter with chocolate flecks and double toasted coconut. Hillary had salted peanut butter and pistachio.

We stepped outside and were planning to go to bed, but just then we heard a band playing Semi-Charmed Life at Republic next door, so we beelined inside and ended up dancing the night away! So glad we found the band {Called Triple Dog Dare} because we went back to see them the next night as well. They were awesome!

Saturday morning we put on our workout clothes and headed down for breakfast. Hyatt Place includes a really nice breakfast spread with hot items from the a.m. Kitchen Skillet / fruit / yogurt / cottage cheese / hot egg sandwiches / scrambled eggs / toast and bagels / cereal. And oatmeal!!!

My oatmeal bowl felt like home with all the toppings available ; )

Hyatt Place has a great 24/7 Gallery with tons of seating and loungey furniture. There’s also a “Coffee To Cocktails” bar that serves Starbucks by morning and drinks by night.

We decided to power walk around town for our workout of the day, knowing we’d probably cover many miles on foot again. We went to the farmer’s market, which was so nice! Loved how spacious it was, and there were some great artisans. Wish we had had more room in our stomachs to try things!

This is now my computer desktop background : )

I stumbled upon my very favorite candles and met the owner of Rewined. I bought three more – two Chardonnay and one Rose! They smell so amazing.

I also bought a bottle of hickory smoked olive oil – yum! This will be so good on grilled veggies.

You guys were so helpful recommending places on Instagram, and we went to as many as we could. Mid morning we had second breakfast at Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit!

It’s the tiniest little spot, but big on good food : )

OMG guys – totally exceeded expectations! These were soooo good! I have one major critique: they were way too cheap! Only $6 for everything you see here. I would have paid $10+ for the same trio! 

Buttermilk with cinnamon butter // Pimento cheese and ham // Blackberry filled

And I’ll end Part I of my recap with this video of the craziest jumper I’ve ever seen!! That’s me on the end risking my neck : ) 

People jump over me a lot. @hyattplace #theresaplaceforyou

A video posted by Kath Younger, RD (@katheats) on Oct 10, 2015 at 9:26am PDT

I have SO many more photos to share – Part II coming tomorrow!

My trip and this post were sponsored by Hyatt Place