Touring Charleston

Wednesday was spent touring Charleston. 

After a breakfast at " Fast and French", a small place that serves wonderful croissants and baguettes and delicious cheeses, (I'm hoping Atkins isn't spinning in his grave) we went for a carriage ride around Charleston

The city is small,  and proud of its heritage and is devoted to preservation, so many houses from 200 years ago are still here, well maintained and lived in. Old municipal builtings still stand and appear in good repair. It all makes for great pictures

Our horse and carrieage

The next few images are of the city and federal buildings moslty located near the old market that I showed yesterday

This next image is the original jail designed to actually keepn people for long periods of time. Before that people were jailed till their trial was held and then either released or hung...this new jail was felt to be more progressive!

This is the home of a rice plantation owner. The plantation was in Georgetown but in the summer the plantation owners would escape the malarial swamps (actually the rice paddies) and summer in Charleston...it was hot but there was no malaria (since there were no mosquitos, but they didn't know that

The typical home of the middle class, called a "Charleston Single". It presented a narrow front to the street, with a door that opened onto a porch, and the door to the house was in the middle of the porch. The reason for this design is that taxes were assessed based on the length of the house facing the street, so they put the houses in sideways.

I spent the afternoon on some minor boat tasks..for some reason I had the urge to wash the deck and mop the cabin floor. I then topped off the fuel tank to get ready for the trip to Miami next week. 

In the evening we all went to the Oak Steakhouse which turned out to be a fantastic restaurant, quite, with tables tucked away in corners for privacy, excellent service, awesome stakes and side dishes and a wonderful wine list...and the desserts were awesome...

We slowly walked home and so to bed

This morning I was awakened at dawn by some large boat going by the marina so I just got up and admired the dawn

Today we willl tour Fort Sumter

Tomorrow I fly back to Baltimore and then return to Charleston to meet Bruce Gregory and continue the voyage, either Tuesday or Wednesday