August 1 is National Girlfriends Day! In honor of this great holiday, I’d like to share with you how I came to find Bella Vista Beach Villa thanks to my girlfriends. “It’s not that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. It’s your best friends who are your diamonds.”
It starts the Fall of 1991, as a freshman in high school (don’t worry, this won’t be a really long blog post). I knew several kids that came from my elementary school, but there were lots of new faces, since my high school pulled students from across the county. I kept seeing the same girl in my class, period after period.
“You’re the ‘she’ to my ‘nanigans’!”
Little did I know at the time that the same girl would become a fixture in my life, through countless lacrosse games, college adventures, ski trips to Killington, VT and Utah, fishing excursions on Long Island Sound, being roommates living the single girl life in New York City, summers trekking to the Hamptons, and traveling through Switzerland together.
“We are best friends. When you fall, I will pick you up… after I stop laughing!”
Our lives progressed and we served as each other’s maids of honor, godmothers to each other’s children, and in the process becoming sisters for life. And through these years we’ve expanded our friendship to a circle of girlfriends who we can count on for anything!
“A good friend will help you move. A best friend will help you move the body.”
When this dear friend of my life found the love of her life, we of course had to celebrate and guess where we had her bachelorette weekend? Myrtle Beach, of course, where she had spent many a summer with her family and held lots of great memories.
Then a couple years later, her younger sister got engaged. And of course her bachelorette weekend was in Myrtle Beach as well! By this time, I was a frazzled mother to two young kids with a full-time job and basically running around with hardly any me-time.
So the beautiful September weekend came not only as a chance to celebrate a great milestone, but to recharge and connect with a great group of girls. That fateful weekend, we had booked a vacation rental condo… in Margate Tower, as luck would have it!
“Best friends can talk for hours about nothing at all, or say everything with just one look.”
As I walked into the vacation rental home that was bachelorette central for the weekend, I was so impressed how open it was and that you could see straight through all the way to a wall of windows to the balcony and the beautiful Atlantic Ocean beyond. A full kitchen overlooked the dining area, which flowed right into the spacious living room, and beyond that was a nice little sitting area perfect for conversations.
Out on the balcony, I could take in the beautiful views from the wrap-around balcony. My BFF and I shared the second master bedroom, which was oceanfront and had a sliding door to access the balcony. The condo was our home base for a weekend of celebrating, relaxing, and connecting.
“A good friend listens to your best stories. A best friend has lived them with you.”
One of the mornings we were there, my BFF and I took a leisurely stroll to the Marketplace at the entrance to Kingston Plantation for manicures. While we were there, we wandered into the Leonard Call office, the on-site realtors, and picked up some information. I hadn’t been seriously looking at real estate, so just filed it away after coming back from that great weekend.
Fast forward a couple years and the opportunity came up that my husband and I could actually consider acquiring some property. The vacation rental that I had stayed in for the bachelorette weekend had stuck in my mind all that time, as I loved the location and amenities of Kingston Plantation, and the awesome layout of the condo.
We were fortunate that the stars aligned when we learned of a condo with that exact layout becoming available, and not only that, but the unit was higher up in the tower - on the 25th floor! Being up that high means you can see past the neighboring Brighton Tower and all the way up the coast to Bald Head Island, NC.
So that’s the story of how a girls’ weekend brought about our home away from home, Bella Vista Beach Villa!
We love that there is enough space to allow friends to come together to celebrate, connect, and make some awesome memories. Off-season is a great time to organize girls’ weekends in Myrtle Beach, the weather is still beautiful and there is a lot to do. Both of the bachelorette weekends I went on were in the fall and they were great! Even at the end of October, it was still nice enough to walk around and enjoy the weather and each other’s company. Book your girlfriend getaway at Bella Vista now!
“We’ll be best friends until we’re old and senile. Then we’ll be new friends!”