From South Carolina to Georgia...

I haven’t had time to write about anything over the past two nights, as we’ve been too busy trying to maximise our limited time in Charleston. Such a charming city and we really needed seven nights there, rather than just three, but none-the-less, we were very fortunate to have the time we’ve had.

There’s a lot to write about with regard to what we experienced during our two full days and nights in Charleston (remembering that we arrived in very late on night one), but in brief... we packed in quite a lot: three fascinating guided tours of grand historic homes (Nathanial Russell House, Edmonston-Alston House & Aiken-Rhett House), a three hour foodie (and architectural) tour of six gourmet providores, a city history tour by horse and cart, independent wanderings around the Battery, private art galleries and through the city craft markets, brunch at the acclaimed Hominy Grill, plus a visit to a twenty-somethings' Oyster & Beer Bar. Utterly amazing architecture everywhere – a total visual overload for history lovers like us.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the horrific death of 9 people in the church service massacre and commemorations were held all over. This city's people are proud and resilient, surviving civil war, financial ruin, earthquakes and hurricanes. What has really impressed me is their considered and serious approach to preservation and restoration. They’ve had one Mayor for forty years, and by all reports he has enabled and nurtured Charleston to become the successful heritage tourism city it is today, in terms of a balanced approach that is appropriate and tempered. There’s so much more to write about Charleston, but I think I’ll need to do that in a formal article write-up or two or three or four, for publication.

This morning we packed up our stuff, and drove into town hoping to get a table at Poogin’s Porch for the best shrimp and grits, but there was a 55 minute wait, which we couldn’t afford, so as we’d parked the car very close to the ‘Fast and French’ (an indie place we visited on the foodie tour) we popped in there for croissants and café cream instead (which was plunger coffee with vanilla ice-cream - a much weaker version of what we in Australia would call Affogato – Italian espresso with ice-cream).

We then left Charleston to visit two plantations, which involved driving over a bridge and then through a residential suburb called west Ashley. It seemed a reasonably nice middle class area with new heritage style homes on big blocks, and a fairly black neighbourhood, which makes sense given the proximity to the places where multiple generations of Afro-Americans lived for so long.

We went to Drayton Hall first, which was on my ‘must-see’ list, as an example of an unrestored house and property. It was well worthwhile. We looked around the beautiful grounds for half an hour, then did a one hour guided group tour of the house.  Next we went 4 miles up the road to visit Middleton Place, which was on my ‘we probably won’t have time’ list, as it’s absolutely huge and there are 5 different types of tours included in the entry fee, so you could definitely spend a full day there. The gardens are the most extensive and oldest planned gardens in the U.S. It was a working plantation and the outbuildings and livestock areas are the most magnificent I have ever seen. The gardens make our Paul Bangay Gardens (superb as they are) in Victoria, look like modest beginner gardens. We spent an hour or so self-touring the property, the extensive camellia gardens, the many lakes and waterways, the enormous octagonal garden and so on and so forth. It was all huge.

Unfortunately, the next (one hour) house tour didn’t start til around the time we’d planned to head off, so we could not do that. Still, it’s pleasing to me that we had the opportunity to view this extraordinary plantation, and also view Eliza’s House and see the slaves’ Chapel. I would dearly love to have done the African connections tours at both properties, but timing wise we just could not do it. Given how grumpy J was about the whole idea of human slavery, I doubt she'd have let me do it anyway. She was quite annoyed that we'd paid 'the owners' money to go into these plantations. The larger value of historic social memory, for multiple communities and for various reasons, is a bit lost on her as yet.

Next we found our way back to highway 17 and drove through into the 'low country' swamplands to Beaufort, which was a 25 minute (each way) diversion off the main freeway. I’ve been looking forward to visiting the township as it’s where ‘The Big Chill’ was filmed in 1983. We got into Beaufort at 4.45pm, with a rather frazzled driver, as he’d been concentrating terribly hard on staying on the right side of the road in all the traffic. We managed to find a park on the main tourist oriented Bay Street, and dash into the Visitor Information Centre five minutes before it closed. It was inside some sort of military fortress that looked mock Medieval. I really should have planned an overnighter here, because there's historic tours, a museum and its a chilled out sort if place to be, with a curious ambience.

We then went straight toward the waterfront in the historic part of town, and found Plums, which is the main eatery everyone recommends on Trip Adviser. There we spent over 90 minutes, enjoying what was effectively both lunch and dinner, involving dishes we’ve wanted to try all our lives. For Laurie that was gumbo. For me that was fried oysters. J had seared Cajun shrimps for starters. It was delicious. For a second round of ‘starters’ (which we call entrée in Australia) Laurie had scallops on flavoursome Cajun rice, I had fried green tomatoes with crab meat, and J had a crab cake with salad. It was all utterly delicious and generous in size. It was everything we’d hoped it would be all these years, so that was a really great reward for all that rather stressy driving. Afterwards we walked along the waterfront, past a public concert for the Afro-American communities, the marina and then a short walk up the esplanade to view enormous mansions. We only had time to see half a dozen, but they all screamed ‘The Big Chill’ to me!

At 7ish we left town, via a supermarket to pick up some vino and rye bread, then drove straight to Savannah, in a race to beat nightfall. Just as we approached a big bridge leading into Savannah, we hit a stand-still, due to an incident on the bridge. We had about 70 or more cars ahead of us, and thought we were in real trouble, but when I got out and walked up to see if I could find out what was going on, a guy told me they were about to reopen the bridge. Phew! 

So before long, it was all about navigating through the city. Didn’t have much brain space to notice too much about the architecture, but being focused on the roads, my first impressions were that I really like the planned, grid style layout of Savannah with all the square and rectangular parks. It may sound unlikely, but it reminded me of Adelaide, in South Australia, where I grew up. We’re looking forward to checking it all out tomorrow. We got an easy park directly opposite our AirBnB place, and opened the front door at 8.45pm, just as last light was disappearing: Mission accomplished!