Charleston

OK, we had a day to "do" Charleston. We always enjoy driving around classic, elegant residential areas and Charleston has an abundance. (I've mentioned that we often wonder where the money came from that enabled people to build or buy mansions and estates. Well, it happened that the Raleigh Sunday newspaper had a review of a book titled, Rich Like Them, by Ryan D'Agostino, on just that subject. The author traipsed through the 20 richest Zip Codes in the US, knocking on doors and asking just that question. Turns out that lots of the money, among those available and willing to talk about it, comes from real estate. Maybe government bailout will move up the list after the current unpleasantness is worked through.)

We just looked at Charleston's houses (no door-knocking), first driving aimlessly around on our own, then taking a guided tour of the city. Somehow I misplaced my notes from the tour, but this guide was not particularly witty or memorable, so maybe it's no loss. Lots of stuff about who lived where and when.

Some pictures:

Professional pictures here.

Here is an example (snapped from a moving vehicle through glass) of a "single house," meaning that it is the width of a single room, set sideways to the street. The porch, called a piazza in Charleston, faces a side yard, rather than the street. Lots of these single houses here. With more time, and a warmer day, it would have been nice to stroll these neighborhoods, peeking into the yards and gardens.

After the tour, we found the Charleston Crab House for lunch. It has a nice waterfront view. Newspaper clipping on the wall quoted Serena Williams saying it was her favorite Charleston restaurant. Note the upside down sign. The owner is a friend of the folks who do the Flip This House TV show and they had remodeled the restaurant and flipped the sign to commemorate the event. I tried the house specialty - she-crab soup, containing roe and crab meat. Very tasty. The reference says orange-hued crab roe was added to crab soup to give it some color. Susie didn't want to even think about it.

After lunch we did some more driving and gawking. The tour had taken us by the original Citadel campus downtown, so we drove to the current campus a little further out.

The above Charleston link, to Wikipedia, focuses on the Citadel's role in the Civil War. Cadets from the Citadel fired on a Union ship entering Charleston harbor three months before Fort Sumter was fired on. Sherman spared Charleston from destruction, as he had earlier spared Savannah.

Old churches and old cemeteries fascinate me. A signer of the Declaration of Independence and a signer of the US Constitution are buried in this cemetery in the yard of the church below.

Though we had lunched rather well, we decided we would (over-) indulge again, this time stopping at a seafood grill near our campground. I had seen shrimp and grits on the Crab House menu and decided to try it here. The reference says "shrimp grits" is a traditional Low Country breakfast, now fancied up. But, grits isn't just for breakfast any more. (Do you remember Bubba, in Forest Gump, listing all the ways you could fix shrimp? I'm sure shrimp grits was in there.) Mine had some spicy brown gravy over the grits, with shrimp arrayed over that. Good stuff.

So, that was our Charleston day.

Cheers,

Susie and Rob