The heat and humidity essentially dictated my entire trip to Charleston and day three was no exception. Because it was so awful outside, we made the decision to stick to indoor activities, which included grabbing a bite at Basil (which was so yummy and amazing as always) and going to the Charleston Museum. The museum was pretty cool and had tons of Civil War era stuff, which I always find fun and interesting. Nicole and I found tons of clothes we would love to wear from back in the day. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take photos of the exhibits. At least the ones for grown-ups. For fun, we went into the kids’ room, where there was a fun little house we could go into. Inside, there were clothes for playing dress up, which Andrew donned willingly for our photo taking fun.

Since we didn’t set off until late in the day, we were unable to go to the aquarium as planned and instead headed back to the house to relax and watch Monday Night Football, a horrible idea as Joe’s Raiders played like crap.

The next day the weather was a little tamer, allowing us the chance to go to Cypress Gardens. Our first stop when we got there was the Butterfly House, home of a pretty baby duck that made fast friends with Andrew. We also hit up their mini-aquarium and checked out various swamp creatures. On our way there, we checked out their tortoise pen, where the cutest big tortoise walked up to the fence to say hi. While talking to him, we heard a “hello” behind us and turned to see birds trying to get our attention. They even said bye to us as we walked away.

Done with the air-conditioned indoor sites, we went off in search of the swamp so we could get a rowboat. Letting the boys handle the rowing, Nicole and I spent and enjoyable hour taking photos of various swamp life, including two little alligators that were swimming around the swap. This particular swamp was actually used for the films Swamp Thing, The Patriot and The Notebook.

By the time our tour of the swamp was over, the heat was starting to get to us, so we head back to the house for relaxing and determining the evenings plans. Settling on dinner and a movie, we set off for Five Guys for burgers. All I can really say about this is *drool*. I love those burgers so much. There really are no good burger joints around here and it’s a total bummer. For the movie, the plan was to see DeathRace. Unfortunately, the theater it was being shown in had a broken air-conditioner, so we chose to see Tropic Thunder instead. Totally worth it just to see Tom Cruise doing what he was doing (I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it yet, but it was good).