Charleston, SC – February 2020 - A Milian Adventures

Getting There

In February we decided to take a break from the 10 degree temperatures in Kansas City and head down to South Carolina. We started our mini vacation with a flight out of KC Saturday morning. The trip started off on the wrong foot with a delayed flight due to paperwork on their end (at least that’s what they told us) and then as we were starting to descend for landing, a woman in the front row had some kind of medical emergency. As it turned out our flight was full of a bunch of doctors on their way to Jamaica for a medical mission, so there was no shortage in people rushing forward to help the woman. We had a very speedy landing and taxi to the gate, and I can only hope that everything turned out alright for her– but of course they don’t disclose that information to the rest of us strangers – they just sent out a “we’re sorry for the inconvenience and our condolences for passenger and her family” email. They actually managed to hold our connecting flight for us, so while there was a decent amount of drama, we did make it into Charleston with no real problems.

Saturday, February 15

We decided to buy a 2 day tour pass for this trip, so a lot of our itinerary was based on the tour items included with that. After taking the city bus from the airport to downtown, we wanted to start our trip with a horse carriage ride through town to get our bearings of the city (through Palmetto Carriage Tours with our tour pass). Before deciding to take the carriage tour we had tried to do a little research ahead of time to make sure we were happy with the animal treatment, and they seemed to be alright from what we could tell. However, we found the tour itself to be very awkward. I guess the mules pulling our carriage were new, and being mules, they were stubborn and thus wanted to do their own thing. Their own thing did not include following traffic laws. I feel like the tour would have been better if they would have had two people leading it – 1 to actually drive and 1 to do the tour. I spent most of the ride freaking out about the mules getting hit by a car, because they would do things like not stop at a red light, or leave the lane to go around storm drains in the road.

After the horse tour we wandered through the market, which was surprisingly still hopping at 5:30 in the evening. We split a biscuit from Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit. It was the perfect appetizer, for we then decided it was time for a full meal and made our way back to King’s Street for some Moussakas at Leyla’s Fine Lebanese Cuisine. They had a reduced menu for the SEWE conference that was in town, but it was still really good and just what we needed. We followed up our dinner with some much needed free* dessert donuts from Glazed Gourmet Donuts. (*Part of the tour pass).

We had an hour or two to kill before our scheduled 9:00 ghost tour, so we spent the evening wandering around on foot with general sightseeing. We followed King Street all the way down to the waterfront. At some point the street changed to neighborhoods and we thoroughly enjoyed looking at the massive houses lining the street and pondering how the distinctive house style came to be. (We did look up the house style later, it is called a Charleston Single House, and is basically just a bit of local vernacular architecture to maximize shade and cooling breezes while keeping a small bit of privacy.) We made our way back along the seal wall toward the market area where our ghost tour began.

The ghost tour, run by Bulldog tour, was very entertaining. We walked around town, and learned about various figures and their death stories including the “origin” of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee”. The tour included a late night visit to the dungeons of the Old Exchange and Provost Building where Pirates and Patriots were each kept at different point in time. Alas there were no ghost sightings on the tour, just good stories!

Sunday, February 16

We started our morning off with breakfast at Big Bad Breakfast (or “BBB”) which was just up the street from our AirBnB. I got the famous Charleston shrimp and grits for breakfast and wasn’t disappointed. Although it was just barely too much food for me.

Sunday we opted to rent a car so that we could make the half hour drive out to the Magnolia Plantations. There are several plantation options to tour in the Charleston area, but we chose Magnolia for their gardens, and their treatment of their history with slavery. We started our visit with a brief visit to their small zoo of fostered and rescued wild animals until our alloted time for the guided tour of their restored slave houses as part of the “From Slavery to Freedom” tour. They have 4 original buildings on site, which have been restored to reflect the different periods of time that people had lived in them while enslaved. The discussion with our guide was deep and drove home that the people sold into slavery were often craftspeople and specialists who brought their skills with them. While it is a dark and sad part of our history to think about, visiting the cabins was very informative and helped to explain the origin of the Gulla culture and community we heard about throughout the trip.

After the slave homes, we took a tour of the main house, a stark contrast to the slave cabins we had just visited. One of the generations of owners referred to staying at the house as “camping in the country”, apparently unaware of irony and the future perception of plantation owners… While the house was interesting and pretty, I enjoyed wandering through the gardens the most. Even though it was still February several of the flowers were in bloom. And there were random ponds with bridges every so often. We even spied a wild alligator across the small river.

The Magnolia Plantation was once a rice plantation. During the Civil War many of their rice fields (as well as most of the plantations in the area) had been flooded with ocean water due to war related damage and storms. So today, one of the rice fields at Magnolia is a swamp (Audobon Swamp), complete with a boardwalk and path through it. Parts of it were on essentially along the top of a low gravel dyke barely out of the water, which was a little unnerving. But luckily the only gators we saw were hiding in the water a safe distance away.

While the entry fee to the plantation was a little hefty, we really enjoyed ourselves and felt like the volunteers helped to provide very valuable context to the site. The only negative we heard was from two french women who had some difficulties with the pace and excitement of the guides and the level of background knowledge needed to give proper context to the slavery discussions.

The weather had been on and off raining, so by the time we left the plantation we weren’t wanting to do anything outside. We decided since we still had the car, we would find a brewery on our way back into downtown. Being a Sunday our options were narrowed down for us, so we found ourselves at Commonhouse Aleworks. We split a flight and a pint as well as some tasty Brussels sprouts. Afterwards we decided to walk over to EVO Pizzeria for some delicious brick oven pizza. We were pretty exhausted from the day, so after eating, we drove back to our AirBnB and just chilled for the rest of the night.

The restored slave houses at Magnolia Plantation

Rice Pestle that slaves would have used to remove the husk from the rice

Angela with a giant goose and peacock at the Magnolia Garden

Whimsical unusable bridge at Magnolia Plantation

Flowers and Spanish moss at he Magnolia Plantation

Angela and Andrew on one of the trams at Magnolia Plantation

Monday, February 17

We decided to save a little money on breakfast for our last day, so after returning the rental car, we walked up King Street to Kudo Coffee and Craft Beer for some coffee and pastries. We took our time, but as the place started to fill up we decided we should give up our table. Our plan for the day was to rent bikes (we had a free rental with the tour pass), but it was still a little too early and the bike shop hadn’t yet opened. So we decided to make use of our tour pass and check out the Charleston Museum for a little bit. There we got to fill in some of the gaps on what we had learned about Rice Plantations from the day before including how rice trunks worked and what the labor required to manage the fields would actually include. Around 10 we made our way to the bike shop, Affordabike, to pick up our free rental Charleston cruiser bikes, then proceeded through downtown to the water. It was a perfect day for riding, and the route suggested by the bike shop was a pretty decent way to see historic downtown.

We detoured away from the water to go check out the Nathaniel Russell House (also included with the tour pass). They had a nice self-guided audio tour to accompany you as you wandered through the house. In stereotypical “rich people” fashion, the most interesting thing I learned was that the Russell’s had doors made of cypress that were then painted to look like mahogany – because everyone knew that was more expensive than actual mahogany doors.

Main Cantilever Stairs in the Nathaniel Russell House (only supported at each floor on one side)

After the house tour, our ambitious selves decided we would ride over the Ravenel Bridge to Mount Pleasant! This 4km long bridge took us a little longer than expected on our single-speed cruisers. Google Maps prediction told us a measly 30 min, but with the hill up and over the water it actually took us over an hour. We had been hoping to spend a little more time on the Mount Pleasant side, but because we had booked a Fort Sumter Tour for that afternoon we barely had time to eat our fancy grits from The Grit Counter – which was a shame because they were delicious. Luckily the way back was quicker, so we made it to the dock with just enough time to hit up the restrooms and wait in line to get on the boat.

Fort Sumter is where the first battle of the Civil War took place. The tour we took (again through our pass) gave us about an hour to wander around the island fort. There were a lot of neat plaques, and old cannons that would have any history buff swoon. I just enjoyed seeing the replica of what the fort had been, and comparing that with what was left of the structure.

After the tour was finished we returned our bikes and stopped for a healthy dinner at Verde, a local salad restaurant chain. For dessert we took the slightly too long and a little uncomfortable walk out to Palmetto Brewing Company. There we enjoyed some free flights included with our tour pass. They had a wide and intriguing selection of beers so we ended up splitting a third flight. When we walked into the brewery it was awkwardly empty (probably because it was a Monday), but it didn’t take long to fill up, and we even enjoyed chatting with some other patrons and the bar tender and listening to a decent guitarist as part of their open mic night.

We flew out early the next morning.