Charleston, SC

There have been whole books printed full of photos of Charleston, so one tiny blog post isn't going to cover it. But here's a sampling of what you can see there. Suffice it to say that it was one of only three American cities to have a city wall at some point, it figured heavily in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, Blackbeard the pirate once held the harbor for three days, demanding medicines for his crew, and a number of its buildings and nearby plantations have come up on a screen near you (Boone Hall was in the miniseries North and South, for example). Enjoy!

Waterfront Park:



Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, where pirates were kept in the dungeon, and where (at another time), George Washington was entertained at a ball in which he danced with all 200 ladies present:



St. Michael's, where he attended church:



The Citadel:



Magnolia Cemetery, where the last soldiers of the Civil War were interred in 2004:



Sweetgrass baskets, a local craft that has direct ties to west coast Africa:



A church on James Island, complete with live oaks and Spanish moss:



Boone Hall:



Rainbow Row, downtown--used to be warehouses, then in the 1930s some ladies decided to "restore" the area--making this very scenic, and a whole lot nicer than it was originally:



Charleston is famous for its ironwork. Perhaps you have heard of its famous ironworker artist, Philip Simmons? I don't know who did these gates--but they are very typical of the town.



Single houses were built sideways on their lots because for a time, they figured taxes based on your streetside length of your lot. To get around this, people built their houses one room wide:



Obviously, not all residents had economic concerns in mind:



And some were just nice row houses, like in Europe:



If you get the chance to visit (or live in) Charleston, you really should!