Charleston SC USA (Part 1)

We thought it rather nice that Charleston celebrated our arrival with fireworks

With 2½ days in Charleston before we were due to meet our friends Ollie and Sheena, we had a mixture of admin to do as well as wanting to do some sightseeing.  Our first priority was to buy an American SIM card for our phone to facilitate communications and then to do something about our meagre wine stocks so that we could celebrate our return to the USA.  We got a taxi from the marina to the AT&T shop which turned out to be in a large mall area along with a Harris Teeter supermarket and the city’s West Marine [Ed:  had we known that we’d have cadged a lift with the West Marine van we saw at the marina as we were ordering the taxi!].  Sim card purchased we bought a few items at West Marine and the all-important wine (and some food) from Harris Teeter and then tried to get a taxi back to the marina.  But to no avail.  It seems as if the mall is too far out of town for any self-respecting taxi driver to wish to visit.  An hour later we were still waiting so we blued some of the sim card’s data on setting up an Uber account and ordering an Uber, which took all of 5 minutes, and 2 minutes later the car had arrived and we were en route back to the marina.  Lesson learned!

We spent a couple of hours first thing on Saturday 27 April rebuilding the water pump for the generator which had failed down in the Bahamas, discovering in the process that the problem was a failure of the impeller.  Not that the impeller’s vanes had broken, rather the impeller’s central hub which connects with the pump had become detached from the main body of the impeller.  Thus, the hub turned with the water pump but the main body of the impeller (including the vanes) didn’t which meant that the impeller didn’t push water through the generator’s cooling system.  Not exactly useful but it took very close inspection to find the fault.

Old town Charleston.  Left: The old market.  Previously a produce market (not the slave market as many people think).  Now a centre for crafts and artisan produce. Right: Carriage rides are a big thing

The Municipal Marina runs an hourly shuttle service into the centre of town, so we hopped onto one of the runs and were dropped off by the old market.  We wandered through enjoying the wide array of crafts, artisan products, delicatessens and other food outlets before ranging further into the old city centre.

Charleston’s US Custom House, though we’re not sure that CBP operates from here these days

The US Custom House is one of many, many very impressive buildings in the city and we enjoyed wandering the streets drinking in the architecture and the atmosphere.

Charleston also seems to be a city of churches and, being a springtime Saturday in a beautiful city, there were wedding parties everywhere we looked.

Bottom left house, 36 Meeting Street

Charleston is home to many stunning, very old buildings and some of them have additional historic significance too.  Number 36, Meeting Street is one such building.  To precis the Preservation Society of Charleston’s plaque: ‘Built by a Huguenot carpenter in 1743 it was later the family home of Captain William Hall, a naval hero of the Revolutionary War, who was imprisoned by the British when they took Charleston in 1780.  The house was later bought by another Revolutionary War veteran, Col Lewis Morris, who was aide de camp to Gen Nathanael Greene when the latter liberated Charleston.  The house still retains the original kitchen fireplace with a rare surviving beehive oven.’  It’s a pretty impressive history but, to be honest, we’re more impressed by the fact that it’s wooden and didn’t end up burned down when the city was taken by the British or retaken by the Americans.  And it’s an awfully large house for a Huguenot carpenter – he must have been doing very well.

Walking around, the wealth that created the old city is clear to see.  That wealth was based on trade in tobacco which, in turn, was based on the slave trade.  Whilst by no means swept under the carpet, that part of the city’s history is hardly visible today.  It’s very easy to wander the streets and take in the beauty of the architecture and almost entirely forget how much misery and cruelty generated the money to create these elegant streets.

In the days before air conditioning, balconies and verandas formed an essential part of a southern mansion’s cooling system and frequently doubled as one of a home’s many public rooms.  Top left: Calhoun Mansion, a famous Charleston landmark, still a private home but which is open to the public at certain times.  We had hoped to visit but ran out of time to do so.  Bottom right:  A typical Charlestonian architectural feature can (just) be seen in this picture.  The mansion has a false façade on the street front, which shuts off the view that a passer-by would otherwise have onto the balconies.  On the ground floor this end wall incorporates the building’s front door, which opens directly onto the balcony rather than into the main body of the house.  Bottom left: Rainbow Row.  Now elegant (and expensive) town houses, in the city’s youth these buildings were in the dock area and were warehouses, bars and brothels

Cleaning the water tanks.  The tank’s inspection hatch appears white because of the bubbles created by the (foodsafe) cleaning agent

After a day of leisure, Sunday was a day of work.  Chief among the jobs was to flush and clean the water tanks, a job that can only be done with a plentiful supply of fresh water on tap, hence our desire to so the job whilst we were in the marina.  But it wasn’t all work.  Having scoped the city on foot the previous day, we decided to return in the evening for a meal out in one of the restaurants we had seen, and an excellent dinner it was too.

Charleston, South Carolina, USA