View From the Tenth Level

Sunday, November 08, 2009

From Cedar Island, NC, we headed south towards Charleston on route 17. We spent a rainy night in Myrtle Beach, where we caught up with two other travelers at a New York style pizza parlor. They insisted that we visit the Rooftop Bar once we arrived at our destination, to get a good view of the city. They loved Dan's Aussie accent. This is something we encountered everywhere we went: "You're Australian, aren't you?" Dan was tickled and it added to his enjoyment of his holiday.

The next day, we had hoped to take in Brookgreen Gardens and Huntington Beach, but the weather was still rainy and miserable. Oh well - that just gave us an extra day in Charleston, instead. Twist my arm!

We arrived in Charleston to book a room and had time left over to do a short tour of the city to get our bearings, and then have dinner. Our first stop was the Charleston Museum.

The museum is well worth a visit if you ever go to Charleston. A walk through it is a walk through time. Visitors learn about the early history of the settlement, early commerce (rice, of all things), plantation life and slavery, the American Civil War ... right up to modern day hurricanes. We spent three hours there, and even that felt a little rushed.

After a late lunch in a charming café where we had tuna sandwiches and clam chowder, we headed into the historic district and walked around to get our bearings. We strolled through Waterfront Park, where Dan spied the USS Yorktown on the other side of the river. Sailboats idly floated by ... it was idyllic.

Horse and carriage tour operators were everywhere, and we made plans to use one, ourselves in the coming days. In the evening, we had a wonderful seafood dinner (by now, becoming something of a theme in the Carolinas) - Southern style, which meant shrimp and cheese grits, and steamed mixed shellfish, then relaxed with cocktails in the company of other off-season travellers.

If you don't have kids, I highly recommend travelling off-season. The rates are cheaper and the pace is more relaxed. Dan and I made plans over dinner for the next two days of our stay. As it turned out, two days was just not enough...

Labels: Charleston, the South, travel

posted by Melanie O. at 10:36 AM -

2 Comments:

At 8:48 PM, chimera said…

I love Charleston. So beautiful, and the food is fabulous.
At 5:10 AM, gardenbug said…

Glad you had a nice time. The photos are lovely.