Last days in the South…

Our last few stops in South Carolina were in downtown Charleston. The first stop of the day was to be the Nathanial Russell House. Nathanial Russell was one of the most wealthy merchants in his day. Nathaniel’s house showed off his wealth by having a big circular staircase, round rooms with ornately carved moldings around the doors and crown molding. Unlike many of the houses in downtown Charleston Nathaniel’s house actually had a front yard and gardens to side of his house, usually the houses come right up to the sidewalk. Aaron and I loved the look of this house it was very beautiful inside.

We next visited the Powder Magazine of Charleston, a powder magazine is where the colonials stored all of their gun powder. To protect the gun powder the walls of the powder magazine were made to be 3 feet thick. Inside was an arched ceiling that came to a point, unexpected in a structure that was just meant to hold gun powder. We had fun playing with the different artifacts within the Powder Magazine.

While in Charleston we saw a lot of beautiful buildings, Aaron pointed out circular church that had a castle like feel to it. I loved this little yellow house right next to a cobblestone road. We traveled down a famous street in Charleston called Rainbow row that has a lot of different colored houses, and is said to be colored that way to bring in a Caribbean feel.

Aaron and I visited another house in Charleston called the Aiken House. It was one of the biggest houses in Charleston. The foundation that owned the house decided that they would only preserve the house rather than restore it. I always think it’s sad that some of these houses are never restored because they would be beautiful if they were. In Charleston they have these benches that were back then about the equivalent to a trampoline today, the Aiken house had one on their front porch.

We briefly stopped by a military college called The Citadel, kind of cool the buildings looked like castles and the floors were a red and white checker board.

We were sad to leave our little apartment near the ocean in South Carolina. We took some pictures of the big houses that were on our little island.

On our way out of South Carolina we stopped in Greeneville, South Carolina. We walked around downtown and stayed the night in a Hyatt hotel, Aaron and I thought it was one of the best hotels we have ever been in. Well thats all for the Southern States, so long and fair well.

South Carolina the Low Country

Here we are in South Carolina and let me tell you it is beautiful! We love it here! Still hotter than a June bride, but we loved the look of the state. South Carolina looked and felt as if we were in a tropical jungle. The drive from Georgia was short so that was extremely nice. We like our cute little apartment that sits right on a golf course.

Our first order of business was to take a boat tour off the shores of Charleston. We saw all kinds of things from a distance but a great way to get an overview of Charleston. We got a great deal on the boat tour combined with a horse carriage tour on Groupon, gotta love the savings. Were able to get some great photos of Fort Sumter, the site where the civil war started. There was an old airplane carrier called the Yorktown that we'll visit later.

After the boat tour, you guessed it, we took our horse carriage tour in downtown Charleston. We were pulled by two mules. They took us through the part of the city that had all the old houses. Charleston has a design of house that we have never seen before, the design was called a Single house. The reason it is called a single house was because the house was a single room wide and long. Charleston is known as the Holy City because it was the first to allow religious freedoms. We definitely saw a ton of churches.

After our horse and buggy tour we decided we would walk around downtown Charleston and take some pictures. There were these really pretty flowers all over the place I'm not sure what they are, but there were bushes of them everywhere.

The last thing to do was to head over to Battery Park, where the Soldiers of the Civil and Revolutionary wars defended Charleston's shores. Battery Park had some old cannons lined up to defend Charleston, which was fun. Lining the park was some million dollar houses, the saying goes in Charleston the best place to live is South Of Broad Street, Chalestonian's affectionately call the people who live in those houses S.O.B.'s, we thought that was pretty funny.