Kiawah Island and Charleston are awesome family vacation destinations! From NYC the trip is under 2 hours by plane making it an ultra convenient and easy part of the US to visit. We recently spent a week in the area, spending 3.5 days on Kiawah Island and 2.5 in Charleston. It was truly the best of both worlds: resort life and city life!
I’d never been to Kiawah or to Charleston so I was very excited to spend some time there, even in the month of July. Luckily, we all like the heat! We’d originally planned to spend the week at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY. I wanted Jack to have a rustic, camp-like experience where he could hike, go out on a lake and get some outdoors time. Then I started following all of the stories in the news about ticks and decided we had to reroute. Hence our South Carolina Family Vacation Itinerary!
The Sanctuary at Kiawah is a beautiful hotel with access to many activities and programs. You can keep yourself busy morning until night. When you check in you get a booklet outlining all of the activities by hour. We were completely overwhelmed by our options. We managed to get in some tennis (me!), golf (MC!) and kids camp (Jack!). The camp had an overabundance of activities. Jack had a chance to swim, cast net, paddleboard, kayak, play games, etc., etc. It was a perfect introduction to new sports and activities elusive to a city boy. The tennis complex at The Sanctuary was pretty serious. There were tons of drills and classes you could take. I wound up getting adopted by a men’s doubles group that was short one player. My partner was 84 years old and ran everybody off the court! Tennis inspo!
Our time in Charleston was less magical. I had heard so much about the history and the culinary delights that were in store in that city. We managed a yummy lunch and a Ft. Sumter tour, which was amazing but HOT! Later that day, Jack developed some sort of stomach bug and spent the next 12 hours throwing up which meant we had to cancel our other tours and rezzies. Next time, Charleston. Next time!
- Where We Stayed: The Sanctuary, Belmond Charleston Place
- Where We Ate: The Ocean Room, The Atlantic Room at the Ocean Course, Little Jack’s Tavern, Magnolias, the coffee shop on King Street behind the Belmond, Belmond room service!
- Where We Drank: Family trip, no bar time!
- Where We Shopped: The Sanctuary Golf Pro Shop, Rack Room, Lily Pulitzer
- Things We Did: Tennis, golf, swimming, archery tag, Kiawah Adventure Camp, Fort Sumter
- Things We Planned but Couldn’t Do: Dinner at The Fat Hen (Kiawah), Lunch at Slightly North of Broad (Charleston), Dinner at FIG (Charleston), Horse and Buggy Ride, Old Slave Mart Museum