USA 2008: 1 - South Carolina

Charleston

Saturday, 15 to Wednesday, 19 March. We flew in to Charleston, South Carolina.

We stayed at the Church St Inn which occupies just about all of a city block. But it felt much more compact and cosy. The staff were friendly and helpful.

Instead of a room plus bathroom we had a suite: this is the sitting room with a table out of sight, a kitchen, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. When we booked it was the only one left and we got a special price. As our friend Bengt Lorentson would be joining us from Florida and staying a night it was good to have the space.

Charleston's long, narrow market buildings ran down the street below our balcony. At one end was the market hall meeting centre.

The buildings are now used for tourist shops - many cheap souvenirs and some more expensive items. Alan bought a smart summer hat which he wore most of the time ... well, outside, at least.

T-Bonz, across the other side of the market, was a favourite eating place. On our first night we ate there as thunderstorms and tornadoes broke out along a vast stretch of the coast. We sheltered under awnings when we left but the wind was blowing the rain in. After a while we were drenched and returned to T-Bonz where other customers were waiting a break in the rain. The staff kindly gave us towels to dry off a bit. Finally as someone said it would come down heavy again we decided to brave the elements and cross the by-now flooded street. We waded through water up to our calves and getting into the hotel had to hang up clothes and shews to dry out. First challenge game: climate 1, visitors 1.

Ansons was our restaurant of choice one evening, though it meant a longer journey. Across the car park from the hotel. Nice place, good food, spent a few more pennies.

Some of these places are pretty dull on the outside. This is one of the best seafood restaurants in Charleston but the exterior is nonedescript. Inside the food definitely isn't! We ate clam chowder in half a dozen places round the town, for lunch or dinner and once as a kind of late lunch/afternoon break. At Hank's we dined with Bengt.

Some restaurants might be dull externally but the houses in the historic district are anything but. Several people told us before going that Charleston is a beautiful city, at least downtown - and it really is.

On the Sunday (our first full day) we walked quite a distance through streets full of houses like this one and others with city offices. There is a certain unity of style - material, size, front of house turned at 90 degrees from the street - but also lots of variety.

These are details from some of the houses along Broad Street in the Historic District.

It was Palm Sunday and Charleston Cathedral had celebrated an important date approaching Easter.

The fountain is a well-known feature and appears in many brochures about the city. It's close to the Ashley River.

Across the Cooper River is the Navy Museum with an aircraft carrier the main exhibit but many others, too. We didn't go aboard the carrier - it was getting late in the day - but we did walk around some of the smaller items.

Bengt drove us up to Magnolia Plantation on the Monday. This is a large estate of gardens and other land connected with an old house. The trees shrubs and flowers are beautiful, the setting attractive on the low country next to the Ashley River. There is the house, but it wasn't as large as Alan said he expected - rather the scale of a large Charleston city house. Worth seeing, however, for the gardens. On the other hand, he never did see any alligators. Pat did!

Here's the house. We just saw the ground-floor gift shop - a rabbit warren of connected rooms difficult to move around when there are many visitors inside.

A project is under way to repair some former slave cabins on the estate. Under the title "From Slavery to Freedom", displays here will interpret black history connected with the Plantation. Of course the wealth of the house was based on the use of slaves to handle the cotton - a bale of which is seen above. Why is this project taking place only now?

A flat-bottomed boat takes visitors for short trips out on the river.

Could have been an alligator here .... but there wasn't.

The garden colours are fairly subdued in most area but there are splashes of bright red, yellow, whites and blues highlighting the woods and shrubs.

Named for the great ornithologist, the Audubon Garden is remarkable. Green-covered swamps with stands of trees are the habitat for a variety of wildlife.

Mangroves standing in swamp water.

Boardwalks snake across the garden. Birdwatchers were photographing cranes and herons.

A change of scene to the oldest museum in the United States - the Charleston Museum, now in a more modern building.

Uniforms and weapons from the earliest days of the USA.

A museum in a museum: a display case in the modern Charleston Museum showing what kind of things were displayed, and how, years ago. A general collection ranging from a maritime painting to a stuffed beaver to something pickled in an explorer's specimen bottle.

In this museum display case can be seen several interesting things. That, by the way, is not meant to include the reflection on the left of Alan taking the photo. The dinner jacket is what Americans call a tuxedo, being named for Tuxedo Park in New York where a gent devised it as something a bit less dressy than a tail coat.

The piano was borrowed by George Gershwin when he stayed at Folly Beach during the summer of 1934. He was writing with his brother Ira the opera 'Porgy ands Bess', collaborating with DuBose and Dorothy Heyward. DuBose Heyward had written the novel on which it was based in 1926.

Take it away, George - we must race to Kentucky to visit Victoria and Jay and their son Darvik who we had not yet met.