YALLfest 2011: Part 1- Before The Festivities

Part 1:

This weekend, I took a vacation and hopped in a car with my husband and best friend to head up to Charleston, South Carolina for YALLfest. It was an eight hour journey from my home in Florida to Charleston and worth every off key singing, bad joke telling mile.

We made a few essential stops along the way...

We left Thursday morning and arrived in time for dinner that night. I was really surprised by historical Charleston's night life. Even in the dark, it was easy to tell what a beautiful city it was. We walked around a little and settled on dinner (since cuisine is a very important part of travel).

Southend Brewery and Smokehouse was a great choice and perfect first taste of this charming city!

We called Friday our day to explore so we packed up and got to see Charleston in the light. Of course, first order of business was finding the site responsible for YALLfest, Blue Bicycle Books.

This is the impressive display Blue Bicycle Books had up for pre-YALLFest. I was glad I got there a day before because apparently THE PLEDGE by Kimberly Derting sold out!

From there, we eat lunch at Magnolia's (where my hubby had delicious fried chicken) and spent the rest of the day exploring. We even visited two more bookstores!

This is inside Magnolia's restaurant and that is my best friend Ashley (who also loves books)!

Here are some photos of our exploration:

On recommendation of someone who'd been to Charleston before, we booked a ghost tour after dark. Right before we did that, we went to Bubba Gump's Shrimp Co for some dinner.

That night we went on the ghost tour and it took us by some of the oldest buildings in South Carolina. Our tour guide's name was Dan and so was our house which was funny. We got to see the oldest building in town which was this little pub right next to Commerce and Tax building (?) and the coolest thing was it had always been a pub. We also found out that there was a parking garage built on top of an old graveyard where a murderess was buried. Apparently she still haunts it. Oh, and if you are looking for some place to eat and you don't like ghosts, don't go to Poogan's Porch since supposedly it is haunted by an old school marm who used to live there!

After, the tour we went to Wet Willie's for a drink before turning in. After all, the next day was YALLfest!

So concludes the tourist Part 1 of my trip. I shall now commence with all the readly, writerly and fan-girly goodness know as my experience at YALLfest!