After a couple days in Savannah too cold to enjoy touring, I was worried that I was trying to push north too early in the season. But the weather turned nice when I arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, and I was able to fully enjoy the many sights the city has to offer.
Sticking with my now established modus operandi, I signed up for the city bus tour. The one I chose was more structured than the ones I’d signed up for in St. Augustine and Savannah in that there were no hop-on hop-off privileges, only one scheduled stop midway through the tour. On the plus side, I found the tour much more thorough and the guide much more knowledgeable. Also, he informed us, the city of Charleston runs a FREE bus around the parts of the city of interest to tourists, but without any sort of narration. His same tour company runs a tour of a nearby plantation. Many people choose to do the city tour in the morning and then continue on to the plantation tour that same afternoon. Instead, I chose to postpone the plantation tour to the next day, giving me time to walk around the city after the morning bus tour.
Before I get underway with the sights, I’ve got to tell a story as a public expression of gratitude. The bus tour let out about noon and I headed straight for a restaurant that the guide had highly recommended: Jestine’s Kitchen. Well, it’s a favorite of many, because there was a 30 minute wait to get in. I was hungry, so I headed down the street and, essentially at random, picked Hyman’s Seafood, with no wait. I sat at the bar and ordered my first ever shrimp and grits, which turned out to be wonderful. Because space on the bar was at a premium, I tucked my baseball cap - the one with the Very Large Array logo from when I’d visited in November - under my thigh. While I was waiting for my order, another guy took the stool next to me. Ordinary guy; jeans, casual shirt, etc. I’m not one to strike up a conversation, but he said something off-hand to me, I replied, and before long, we were having an extensive conversation. I, of course, told him about my RV touring, and he had stories about international travel he’d taken for his job. We fell mostly silent when our food came, but before I left, I thanked him for the conversation and handed him my retirement card (upper right corner of this blog page). I was about six blocks away when I realized I didn’t have my cap. I treasured that cap; it was a good momento and hard to replace. I returned to the restaurant, but they’d seen no trace of it, and my lunch companion was gone. Though I try not to be attached to things, I berated myself for being so careless, right up until I fell asleep that night.
As I checked my email the next morning, there was one from a name I didn’t immediately recognize: my lunch companion from yesterday! He had my hat! What’s more, just in case the email didn’t reach me, he’d used the internet to find a number for a cellphone message, too. Our schedules didn’t mesh to meet, but he left the hat at the front desk of his hotel and I very gratefully retrieved it. My curiosity was piqued about this kind and resourceful person, so I looked him up on LinkedIn. Turns out, he had more than a “job”. He had led, built up, and sold a couple biotech firms, the most recent one for several hundred million dollars. Knowing that, his kindness for such a small thing as a cap impressed me even more.
As a quick addendum, I got into Jestine’s Kitchen for an early dinner after I’d been turned away at lunch. Jestine’s is known for Southern home cooking, and I had pot roast with all the fixings. The restaurant’s popularity is well deserved.
On with the sights. Besides the bus, a popular alternate way to tour the city is in a horse-drawn carriage:
But it was just chilly enough that I was glad to be in a nice enclosed bus. The city visitor center is conveniently located and had parking spaces long enough for my van, plus the tours depart from there. However, a day of parking will cost you the better part of twenty dollars.The visitor center is converted from an old train station, and adjacent to the center is a free museum for the “Best Friend of Charleston” railroad engine:
This is a replica of the original engine, assembled in 1830, which was the first railroad engine built entirely in the United States. The boiler of the original engine exploded after only six months of service, due to operator error. However the railroad it helped establish was an important factor in ending an economic recession in Charleston.
The replica of another relic is across the street in front of the Charleston Museum: the Hunley, a civil war era submarine:
Nearby is the Joseph Manigault house:
It offers tours of the interior, but I didn’t have the time. Also nearby is the former location of The Citadel military academy:
The academy has since moved to the outskirts of town, and as you can see, the building is now an Embassy Suites hotel. Further down the block is the Second Presbyterian Church of Charleston:
and across from it is Marion Square with a large monument to John C. Calhoun:
Facing the Square, the towering spire of the St. Matthews Lutheran Church can be seen for many blocks:
The primary buildings of the College of Charleston are a couple blocks south and east:
However, the campus is actually distributed in many old historic buildings across a broad swath of the city.
King Street is the main shopping street of the downtown area, and has many high-end shops:
King Street crosses Broad Street, and a block east is an intersection called the “Four Corners of Law”. On the southwest corner is he Federal Courthouse and U.S. Post Office:
On the northwest corner is the county courthouse, originally the provincial capitol:
On the northeast corner is City Hall:
And on the southeast corner is St. Michael’s Episcopal Church:
I attended Sunday services there. It has the box pews, and a pulpit that projects up and out almost to the middle of the congregation. The adjacent graveyard is noteworthy:
At the southern tip of the peninsula is The Battery. It is most notable for the attack on Fort Sumpter that began the Civil War. There are tours of the fort, but on this visit, this is as close as I got:
The area of The Battery is now a commemorative park:
Some of the biggest and nicest houses in the city are near the park:
The mansions above bear the influence of a signature style of architecture for Charleston, the single house:
Narrow and deep with a porch along the side, they occupy only a single-width lot along the street. Contrast that to the more expansive double houses:
and others that are a blend of the two:
Near The Battery is Rainbow Row, so called because each house is painted a different color:
Charleston has a wealth of interesting architecture:
Because the downtown is compact, and with the help of the busses, I was able to tour all this in one day. That left the next day free to venture outside the city to a plantation, the subject of my next post.
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