Myrtle Beach: The Guts of the Vacation

Act 2: Scene 1 On Saturday, August 2 my Dad's second to youngest sister Aunt J and Uncle R and my cousins also arrived in Myrtle Beach. They traveled from Jersey so they were pooped. And after our wretched K&W experience we were too disgruntled to congregate. We made plans to go out to dinner Sunday night and then come back to our condo. Sunday during the day was filled with keeping Bean occupied and away from the balcony... And going down to the beach and the pool. We enjoyed the pool a lot, it came with a lazy river! However, the river wasn't that lazy. It was pretty fast moving. Walking against the current was a nice thighular area work out. Later that night we decided to meet up with Aunt J and Uncle R and fam and go to Carrabbas for dinner. Talk about yum. Lots of food, wine, carbs and overall goodness was consumed here. That's Mom and Bean. Note the happy faces on both of them, a far cry from the previous night's nonplused experience. Here are the relatives Aunt J and Uncle R and their beautiful family Lets not forget Nanny & Pop... Looking happy and cute And here's my family! This is a typical family photo for us, someone has their eyes closed, some people aren't smiling, Bean is always distracted, and no matter how good my hair looks at the start of the night it's always frizzed for "photo op hour." Mom always manages to look great though. *sigh* What can you do? After dinner we came back to our condo and played Scrabble. That was the overarching theme... Good food, followed quickly by Scrabble. A perfect vaycay if you ask me. Scene 2 Monday we spent more time at the beach and lazy river. We always had breakfast and lunch at the condo and then would get together with Aunt J and her fam later for dinner and/or afterwards fun. Monday night we ordered in, BBQ and Ribs from Sticky Fingers. What a great name of a restaurant and very fitting and very good. Yep, we played Scrabble afterwards and had various movies playing the background. Family milling around, sounds of waves crashing from out on the balcony, it was a great night. Scene 3 Again, more with the beach and pool. This day was a scorcher. My Dad and brother JCD went to play golf regardless of the disgustingness outside. Brother MBD and GF stayed at the condo and went to the pool. Mom, Bean, Nanny & Pop and I went for a drive into Myrtle Beach and South Myrtle Beach. There's so much new growth and new resorts going up. They were so neat to look at. Not to mention the GORGEOUS beach houses that are on the ocean. I love to drive along and look at houses. For lunch that day we got Wendy's. Very beach-esque, I know. Aunt J and her family went out for mani/pedis and shopping and had a late lunch; because of this we had dinner just our family. Nanny & Pop wanted to go out for an early dinner this night too. So, we decided to go out for Mexican. It was delicious. I got a really spicy chicken dish that made my tongue blister it was so hot! Afterwards we met up with the cousins for a game of Mayday Mini Golf. It was hot and not as much fun as it sounded earlier in the evening. We were happy to be back home in AC! Scene 4 Wednesday was more of the same... Beach, pool. However, we also scoped out the outlet mall down the road, Tanger Outlets. They had some great stores. Bean was super fussy though and was protesting a nap so I didn't try anything on but made note of the stores to come back to. That night we had Thai take-out for dinner. Oh man, talk about yum. We ordered from a place called ENoodles and got a bunch of different dishes and shared them all. Only a few bites were left over. This was followed by more Scrabble and more movies. Scene 5 Thursday was Aunt J and Uncle R and fam's last night in Myrtle Beach. To make it special we made reservations to go out to a local Irish Pub that was supposed to be fantastic, Molly Darcy's. It was fantastic if by fantastic you mean over-priced and smokey. The salmon and Blue Moon were stellar though. The smoke and thunderstorm that happened while we were there was not. Afterwards, we came back to our place and played more Scrabble while watching Catch Me If You Can, SUCH a great movie. Rent it if you haven't seen it, you won't be disappointed. I'm not a big Leo DiCaprio fan, but he was great in this. My Aunt J is an avid Scrabble-er. She's a member of the International Scrabble something-or-other Association. Hard core, huh? I was on my own Scrabble team this night, and I came in second to Aunt J of course. I was very pleased. All that Scrabble had sure payed off! Tomorrow concludes the Myrtle Beach in Three Acts installment! I know I slacked on pictures, but tomorrow will make up for it... Lots more pictures to come!

Myrtle Beach Vacation... In Three Acts

Act 1: The first day, Saturday, August 2 My family and I went to Myrtle Beach, SC for our vacation this summer. If you ever have the opportunity to go, go. There's so much to do and the beach is perfect and the waves are never offensive. Here's a peek at our first day. We took three cars down to Myrtle: the Corolla consisted of Me, my brother MBD and Bean; the Le Sabre carried Mom, Nanny and Pop; the SUV toted Dad, JCD and JCD's GF. Each car was stuffed to the gills with baggage and fun. Our car was the funnest one, of course, if you were a fly on the wall this is what you'd see The ride down was great, MBD was great company. It went fast too, mostly because my lead foot enjoyed the speed limit Once we got into SC I had to use the bathroom BAD! Everyone thought it'd be a good idea to stop at a run down gas station. The whole place was so gross, the bathroom looked as if one too many truckers got serviced by hoes and oddly enough there was a line to use said bathroom. Nasty. Here I am coming back to the car *note smile is due to almost being at destination* Needless to say, bathing in Purel occurred soon after this picture was taken. Not long after this we arrived at our resort, Mar Vista Grande, it's actually located in North Myrtle Beach, there's not as much traffic and newer resorts. We stayed in the Penthouse on the 15th floor, which I wasn't too pleased with. The only differentiator from what I can tell are the high ceilings, which I could live without. The only redeeming factor was the incredible balcony view of the ocean. Here's what our place looked like from the ocean We were all pretty tired once we arrived and unpacked the cars, so we decided to go to K&W Cafeteria. This was because my grandparents couldn't stop talking about it. Apparently, 20 or so years ago it was EXCELLENT. Now, however, it's so stale and greasy that we vowed and the grandparents agreed to never go back. The only good thing about it was Bean's high chair, it had wheels on the bottom and I pushed him really fast up and down the aisles, he loved it. The nonplused look on his face sums up our K&W experience. Here we are in front of K&W, thought I'd capture this so we can look back on it any time we need to make ourselves throw up This concludes our drive down/first day, hope it was a good one! Stay tuned for Act 2 tomorrow! Nighty, night :)