Charleston, SC

I’ll try to keep it short. 🙂

Lots of uneventful (yea!) hours in the car heading south, and we arrived in Charleston Sunday afternoon, after all the heavy rains and flooding left. Easily found our hotel (the King Charles) on Meeting street, and unloaded, stretched, went for a short walk to work the kinks out. Then had a fabulous dinner at Jestine’s Kitchen, right down the street. I have never had fried chicken like this – OMG, it was delicious! A had a pecan crusted chicken, and we had their fabulous cola cake for dessert. Perfect end to a weekend in the car!

Yesterday (Monday) we took a bus tour around the city to get oriented and see all the things we should see. It was interesting, and did get us very well oriented. This part of the city is not very big, but has so many nooks and crannies to explore. We went for a walk in the afternoon and explored the upper part of King Street, also went to eh Charleston film at the Visitor center. While there I asked about local yarn stores. Turns out, there are none in the city proper. there is one about 30 miles away. Can you believe it? A city with a population (including suburbs) equal to half the population of my whole state, and there are no yarn stores? Very odd. A said maybe they don’t knit here because it is so warm? I can’t answer it, just am disappointed.

There is a huge bead store I will check out on Thursday, though.

Today we took the ferry ride over to Fort Sumter and explored that. Not much there, really, just a fort that is being restored, a museum and a gift shop.. but it was nice to be on the water (as we think it is hot) and it was interesting to see the fort and learn more about it’s history, beyond it’s place in history at the start of the Civil War.

after lunch, we rested a bit, and I went for a swim. I thought the water was on the cool side, but easily bearable, but a nice southern lady said she knew right away I was from the north, because apparently the water is too cold to get into. Ha! I was cool for the rest of the afternoon.

I conned A into taking a short walk with me after that, we walked all the way down East Bay to the Battery, and back up Meeting Street – lots of beautiful things to see, but we were both hot again and tired when we returned. So now we are just resting and cooling off before we have our delicious supper in our room. I think tonight it will be peanut brittle, Krispy Kreme donuts and a little praline. And of course, left over fried Chicken from Jestine’s Healthy diet!

Tomorrow we head off to explore Middleton Plantation. Maybe I will find a yarn store over that way. Certainly I will work on the dark gray socks.

PS one thing I did do this week is read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, and I loved it. I would have loved it even if we weren’t here, but nice that it is set in Charleston. We have kept our eyes peeled for the Grimke House, and finally I looked it up. We have walked around it three different ways, but never actually past it. When we have the car out tomorrow, I hope we will remember to drive by so I can snap a photo….