Charleston Trip

[lisamoe]

I'll post more in detail, but here are the major things I saw in Charleston:

I stayed at the Lodge Alley Inn, which is a converted warehouse in the historic district.

I also went to:
CSS Hunley, the first successful attack submarine
The old Navy Yard
Charles Towne Landing, the site of the original settlement, now a state park/archeological site
The Battery/White Point Gardens
Rainbow Row, a series of famous houses at the Battery
Fort Sumter, which is on an island at the mouth of the harbor (you have to go by boat)
Patriot's Point, which among other things, has the USS Yorktown, now a giant museum, and the USS Laffey, a destroyer that survived a huge kamikaze attack in WWII
The Exchange and Provost Dungeon
The Powder Magazine
The City Market
A carriage ride of the Battery area
A late night "Dark Side of Charleston" walking tour that included a historic brothel and moonight tour of the Circular Congregational Church graveyard
The opening of the Old Slave Mart museum (I shook the Mayor of Charleston's hand)
The Arthur Ravenel Bridge

Plus I ate at a lot of good places and saw lots of fun little shops. Of course every single building you step in in Charleston is historic and significant and has some long back story, but those are the main tourist destinations that I managed to get to. Just as interesting as the buildings and museums were the crazy crazy locals though, but that's another entry.

If you want to see any of the things I mentioned, here's the entry for Charleston at wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston%2C_sc

Comments

[0ccam.livejournal.com]

Lodge Alley Inn - OK. We'll check that out.
CSS Hunley - Can't remember why we didn't get to look at this.
The old Navy Yard - Was this interesting?
Charles Towne Landing - Saw this. It was very interesting.
The Battery/White Point Gardens - I have a good photo of my hand on one of those mortars.
Rainbow Row - one block over is the home of one of the Piggly-Wiggly people: complete with stone pigs by the gate.
Fort Sumter - Loved it!
Patriot's Point - Didn't get here...
The Exchange and Provost Dungeon - didn't go in
The Powder Magazine - didn't go in
The City Market - of course!
A carriage ride of the Battery area - *makes notes*
A late night "Dark Side of Charleston" walking tour - did that! Very cool. Except that the graveyard was closed for some reason...
The opening of the Old Slave Mart museum (I shook the Mayor of Charleston's hand) - *makes more notes*
The Arthur Ravenel Bridge - Yes. Drove over that a few times. My uncle knows all the statistics by heart.

Thanks for the report! Next time we're there we'll have some stuff to catch up on.

[lisamoe.livejournal.com]

The Hunley is only open on weekend afternoons for tours. You get to see it in the tank that they've got it in while they try to desalinate the hull and stabilize it. A very cool little piece of history. It's at the Navy Yard, which I just looked around as we drove through. It's not in a good neighborhood and I wouldn't go out of my way to see it, but it was neat to imagine what it was like when it was a huge bustling shipyard.

Patriots Point is a must-see if you have any interest at all in Naval History. The Yorktown is just packed with historical exhibits, so many that you go nyumb after a few hours. They also have the diesel submarine Clamagore and the Coast Guard Cutter Ingham that you can go through. We went at lunchtime and ate lunch in the CPO's mess hall, complete with metal lunch trys and all.

Our "Dark Side" guide had a key to the cemetary, yay.

The powder Magazine is tiny and just has a small exhibit, but it's only $2 to visit and is of some historical significance. It's one of the only buildings still standing of the original walled city. I enjoyed it. The Exchange and Dungeon is definitely worth a walk through, if only to see in the basement there the only surviving remnant of the original city's seawall.