Charleston SC visit
My wife and I recently went on a visit to Savannah which is discussed here. Since we had a bit over a week, we decided to also visit Charleston. I did not know much about Charleston besides some history tidbits (e.g. that’s where the Civil War started) and wasn’t sure what to expect. I must say that I ended up being more impressed by Charlston rather than Savannah. I didn’t realize that people have been arguing for centuries about whether Savannah or Charlston is better. I must say that I’m on team Charleston.
Even though Charlston got destroyed more during the Civil War, there are still plenty of buildings with a long history (even from the sixteen hundreds). Based on what I heard, Savannah surrendered without a fight and therefore was spared the distraction that other Southern cities had to endure. Charleston wasn’t as lucky. However, Charleston seems to have a more cohesive architecture and the historic district is much less commercialized than that of Savannah. Part of the town architecture is what’s called the Charleston single house. These houses are typically narrow and relatively long. They have a door and two windows facing the street. The door leads into a long porch (called piazza by the locals) that typically goes the length of the house. In front of the porch is typically a small courtyard used for parking today. One interesting thing is that the porches were often used for sleeping in the warm months and the wall from the neighboring house facing the porch typically has no windows to provide privacy.
The historic district area is very interesting to walk around in. In particular, the French quarter is nice. You must also walk by the Rainbow Row, a series of houses that used to be owned by merchants and were very close to where the boats used to come to load produce a few hundred years ago.
One of the things that made Charleston more enjoyable and less commercialized was that a key part of the historic district is purely residential with no stores (South of Broad Street). We really found that part of the historic district most enjoyable. A key part of that area were the large beautiful mansions where many of the famous people of Charleston lived. Even the more modest homes there were very well maintained and created a really picturesque area to walk through. I’m not sure whether this area had many fewer tourists relatively to Savannah because we were there during weekdays or because it is not as popular. The area felt more like a real town rather than a tourist attraction.
The water front there was also enjoyable to walk at although it didn’t have the level of activity that Savannah’s water front had. We didn’t mind that but others may prefer the vibrancy of the Savannah waterfront.
There were a couple of part of the town that were full of tourists and tourist shops. Those were King Street and Market Street. Outside of those areas, the area felt relatively calm and easy to enjoy.
We tried a few restaurants in Charleston. We visited the Poogan’s Porch and tried the traditional local dishes (fried green tomatoes, fried chicken with hoppin’ John and collard greens, and the shrimp and grits). The food was decent and I’ve gotten to really like the collard greens but the dishes were heavy and I felt I had to walk a long time to recover from the meal. We also tried the Magnolias restaurant the next day which I enjoyed a lot more maybe because I ended up having a much lighter vegetarian dish (Veggie Paella). Magnolias has a better rating on Google Maps also so others seem to have the same opinion. It was really an amazing experience and probably one of the better restaurants I’ve eaten at.
We did the obligatory walking tour. The tours on horse carriages seem to be more popular than the walking tours. We also did a tour of Fort Sumter where the Civil War begun. The boat ride there was about 30 minutes and the narration was quite interesting. Getting a view of the town from the water provides a different perspective. I didn’t find the walk on the Fort itself particularly interesting although there is a small museum with a lot of interesting historical information which I enjoyed. Part of the problem was that it was windy and raining so the outdoors was not particularly enjoyable.
We also did the obligatory visit to a plantation. We did the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. Definitely well worth the visit. This was my first plantation. We ended up spending a fair amount of time. We walked around the gardens, did the tour of the main house, visited the animal exhibit, and even did a small train ride they had. One of the surprises was that we found out that there are over 400 allegators roaming around the property. We were not aware of that before going on our walk but fortunately we didn’t have any close encounters. We did see several of them from afar.
