Road Trip-- Day 3

Day 3—Touring Charleston

We woke up early enough to actually plan our day and book a 9:45 AM sightseeing tour with the Historic Charleston venture. Already I’ve come to love the “Darling” phrase used by everyone! People are just so nice here! So we headed across the bridge and drove to the Charleston Visitor’s Center early just to get a parking space. I have to tell you that parking is at a premium in Charleston, so anytime you can park at the Visitor’s Center parking lot for $1.50 per hour—take the opportunity!

Since the drive from Patriot’s Point across the Ravenell Bridge takes only 15 minutes, we were quite early and settled in on taking breakfast at the Charleston Tea Company across the street.

The Visitor’s Center was actually a converted railroad station. It’s now a central stop off point for visitors and tour busses, and really easy to find!

Lots of things grabbed my attention in Charleston, but most of all, I was enchanted by the verandas. House after house displayed generous verandas, and I could just imagine summer evenings rocking gently and appreciating the cool breezes coming off the ocean.

Tour over—we opted to take the free green public trolleys (aka busses) to travel freely and hop on and off as we wanted. We stopped at churches,

strolled by various legislative buildings,

and the governor’s house.

I loved the gardens and concluded it was so easy to have an impeccable garden because they were so small. Space is at a premium in Charleston, and the houses are close together with small driveways/ parking spaces for cars.

We headed back to the Rainbow Market...

 ...and grabbed a sandwich for a late lunch... I had the most delicious duck confit sandwich!



Tired, we opted to head back to Patriot’s Point and take a late afternoon nap before deciding what to do next. I took a walk along the pier and snapped these pictures of the hotel and views along the harbor.

Dinner at Sticky Fingers, and then we called the trip to Charleston a success! We were lucky in that the weather held out, and with rain and a cold front moving in, we would be heading back home just in time.

Road Trip-- Day 2

Day 2
We had breakfast at the Holiday Inn at Surfside Beach, which used to be a small community just south of Myrtle Beach, but clearly, now some developers have discovered it as well. Ed wanted to go there for breakfast because he spoke at a conference for small chemical industry people last year and it was held at this Holiday Inn.

It was a brisk and sunny morning, kicking up some foam on the beach!

Again, for me, there's nothing quite so wonderful as the feeling of sand under my feet!

After breakfast we drove down the road to see if we could find our old spring break place "Uncle Max's cabin" (because it really did belong to our kids' "Uncle Max"-- it was a rustic place but we enjoyed it immensely at the time. The area had really been renewed and in the place of the all rustic summer beach cottages were now these beautiful 3-story beach homes available for rental. I rather missed the rustic beach cottages-- guess I'm attracted to rustic!

We drove on to Charleston, which is about 2.5 hours from MB, and stopped at Boone Plantation.  

  This is a worthwhile visit because it's one of the few plantations where the slave cabins are still intact. A historic interpreter, and descendant of the Gullah people, gave a presentation/ lecture on the gullah culture.

It would be nice to gain more indepth knowledge about Gullah. I can defiitely see a weekend marathon of watching the mini-series North South on the horizon since it was filmed on Boone Plantation along with Alex Haley's Queen.

By the time we left Boone Plantation it was time to get down near Charleston and find our lodgings on Patriot's Point. Because Mapquest didn't provide the final directions for how to get there-- something I didn't discover until we were well on the road!), we went straight to the Charleston Visitor's Center to pick up a map and information.

After that we found Patriot's Point and checked in to the Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina.  

The room wasn't ready (which seems to be the norm for this place judging by the line at the desk). However, it is situated so very nicely on the Charleston Harbor with a great view!

The resort provides a free shuttle service to downtown Charleston, so we took advantage of that to explore a bit of downtown and have dinner.

Ed was in the mood for barbeque, so we found Nick's Barbeque place on King Street.

It's a cute little place for "casual" dining. I had the pulled pork sandwich and Ed had the ribs with sweet potato souffle and green fried tomatoes.

We then walked down King Street and stopped for a coffee at this cute little coffee shop...

And when I saw this...

...I finally understood why Phillip kept bringing home those coffee grounds for the composting pile.

After dinner and coffee, we enjoyed some city life by walking back to the Rainbow Market area to catch our shuttle going back to the hotel.

Well before 8 AM we jockeyed for a position on the 8 o'clock shuttle back to the hotel and were exhausted. I think we both fell asleep by 9!