Visiting the city of Charleston, SC, is another bucket list item that we got to cross off our list.

We found a LaQuinta (that didn’t charge for pets) and Smokie settled right in

Make your self at home Smokie

Not only did this place not charge for the cat but there was a marina right across the road!

A marina across from the hotel

Plus they had a shuttle van to downtown Charleston.  Score!  And there was a fantastic restaurant right down the road called California Dreamin.  Yummy, Yummy!  So many good things all in one spot, how did we luck out?

The restaurant that was within walking distance of the hotel, we ate there every night.  It had a superb view of the harbor.  We ate in the elevated bar as those seats were first come first serve, and we got the best seats in the house.  One of the things they had there was a house salad.  Now I am not much of a salad eater, after all, lettuce is for rabbits, but the salad they had there and their house dressing was to die for!  I had it every night.  As Gary really liked it to, I told him I could Google it and get the recipe so I could make it at home.   Guess what it has in it?  BACON GREASE!  Bacon Grease! Ah shoot, that will teach me to find out the ingredients of something I like.  I am so disappointed and slightly grossed out.  I’m not a big fan of grease and things with thick white fat in it

Anyway, before we left Minnesota, I had done some research about what to see and what to do.  I checked out and bought some tourist attraction events for Charleston.  One was a harbor cruise and the other was a horse drawn carriage ride thru the old part of the town.  Hopefully we will have better results from the pre-purchasing of tickets than we did in Minnesota 😉.

The first day of our visit we decided to go on the harbor cruise.  We had some time to kill after breakfast so we decided to check out the marina across the street.  It was small, based on what we were used to, but it had some very high dry stack, 5 high.

Wow!

Just think of the size of that fork lift.  Geeez!   We decided that the most popular motor was

Yamaha’s

That says something when most of these boats have a Yamaha on them.  Or maybe that’s all they sell here 😉.

After we spooked around a little, we went back to the hotel to jump on the FREE shuttle.  Again, a big fat FAIL on pre-purchasing tickets.  Guess what?  It’s really HOT in Charleston in the summer.  I should have checked out the “feels like” temperature and not just the temperature.   It was in the 90’s with high humidity so the feels like temperature was in the 100’s.  I could have gone to Florida for these temperatures, oh yah, I’m going there next.  I’m melting, melting…..but dang it, we’re here and the room is already paid for, so lets get to it!

The shuttle van dropped us off at the

US Custom House.

This is a historical building that began being built in 1853.  In 1860, construction stopped as it is too costly to finish it.  The building was partially damaged during the civil war.  In 1870 they began construction on the building and finally finished it in 1879.  That’s a long time, I bet that contractor didn’t get a bonus!

We only saw 2 people go in the building.  I guess it doesn’t draw much traffic, after all, there is nothing to eat, drink or buy in that building.  Unlike the City Market, but more on that later.

First things first.  When the guy dropped us off, my first thought is lets remember what streets we are on so we can find our way back to the shuttle at the end of the day.  As we were being driven into town, I noticed the streets are super narrow

Very Narrow Streets

The driver told us on certain days, the meters are turns off and the whole street becomes a parking lot.  I was very glad I wasn’t driving, I was cringing and moving away from the side of the van as we narrowly missed cars and trucks.

Once we were dropped off, we had about a 5 block walk to get to the harbor where our tour boat was supposed to be.  It was a hot fast walk and Gary was hot and sweaty by the time we arrived.

Gary waiting for boat loading

I already had the tickets (see above) for the ride so I bought both of us nice cold bottles of water to help cool us down.  They had no place to sit in the shade and we had to wait 20 minutes before they would let us on the boat.  I found a little shade and breeze in the shade of a pillar and Gary finally found some shade and a bench about a block away.  We waited until almost everyone had boarded the boat, I called Gary, and he hustled back so we could get on the boat.  Here is the boat we got on

Carolina Belle

Naturally we beat feet to the air conditioned bottom section.  The air conditioning was super nice, the smell…not so much.  By the looks of this carpeting and the smell inside,

Smoke dingy carpet

I am pretty sure they used to allow smoking in here.

So this boat has big windows around the whole lower lever with chairs directly in front of the windows so you can sit and look out the windows.  Little did we know, the boat was going to travel in a counter clock wise path so the only good view would be out the windows on the port side.  I was able to grab a table in the middle, underneath an air conditioner vent (Gary says he keeps me around cause I’m smart😉 .  Some of the things we saw were

Fort Sumter

Cannon at Fort Sumter

Ft Sumter flag

Ft Sumter

How would you like to be those people on that black thing in 90 degree heat?  No…thank….you!

Some important person’s house

The Captain, who was a woman I might add, was giving the tour as she drove.  Pretty impressed she could do both things at once.  LOL, just kidding ladies 😉.  This was a famous someone’s house, don’t remember who but it had been remodeled several times and it was on the point so it had a fantastic view.

I took a zoom up of this boat coming into the harbor

Pushing a big wave

Look at that wave he is pushin.

They had a air craft carrier, USS Yorktown, you could go on, but again, black deck, super hot, I think I’ll pass.  The Captain of our boat was talking about how the city had gotten funding to spruce up the air craft carrier but not the submarine they had on display

Submarine

You can see, it needs a little work.

We had a good cool ride and the Captain of the boat was very informative, so all in all, a good buy.

After we got off the boat we noticed these boats on the next dock.  Look at how far out of the water they are on their lifts

Low tide

Quite a tidal swing huh?  It would be a bummer to drop anything off the boat while it was on this lift ☹.

By the time we made the walk back into town, it was really steaming hot.  We had like 4 hours to kill before the shuttle came to pick us up.  Hmmm, I guess it is time to have some lunch.  We stopped at one of the first restaurants we came to called Hooked Seafood.

Lunch time

We both wanted a large glass of water and someplace cool to sit.  They brought us a large bottle of ice cold water and brought us another one before we were all done.  No air conditioning at this place but they did sit us under a ceiling fan so we could get a breeze and we were in the shade.  I don’t remember what we had so I guess it wasn’t that memorable but it cost us $35 for our pleasure.  We did see the Oscar Mayer Hot Dog Mobile!

Oscar Mayer Mobile, here it comes

Hot Dog Mobile, there it goes

I don’t think in all our travels I have seen one this close.  Another bucket list item to cross off 😉.

We still had 3 hours to kill so we decided to hit the City Market.

City Market

This was the beginning of it and it went on and on for blocks.

Inside City Market

No air but at least it was in the shade.  Almost every booth sold these baskets

Baskets from City Market

Each booth had some old woman weaving a basket.  I guess they want you think she weaved all the baskets and they didn’t really buy them from China or India.  Apparently these baskets were used to winnow rice.  Winnow rice?  Yah, I didn’t know what that meant either.  Here is what Google says “Threshing, which is the loosening of grain or seeds from the husks and straw, comes before winnowing. In its simplest form it involves throwing the mixture into the air so that the wind blows away the lighter chaff. The heavier grains fall back down for recovery. ”   This blog is so educational 😉.

I can only stand so much shopping and we were still very hot, so we ducked in a IHOP (who’d a thunk there would be an IHOP in historic downtown Charleston?).  There were a few other people in there with the same idea as us.  We ordered a couple of milk shakes and sucked on them for over an hour.  They weren’t that busy so our waiter didn’t seem to mind we were just hanging out there.  Finally we were ready to head back to the shuttle and our nice cool hotel room.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a little cooler.