On Monday, August 2, we packed up and checked out of our hotel.
I forgot to mention that one of the days we were in Charleston, we went to the Historic Charleston City Market where a lot of local craftsmen sell their goods. It's kind of like a big indoor flea market though. I think there are certain times were only local craftsmen are allowed, but most of the time it's open to any kind of vendor. It is historic because the market was originally established in 1790. It stretches across four city blocks. We found some really cool things in there, including some Gullah sweet grass baskets, small metal sculptures, and a new wallet for Brian. We also picked up a book about Charleston.
Before leaving the hotel, we took one final picture of the wallet that Lindsay Jo bought him way back in high school, the one that I washed at least two times. It stayed behind in Charleston.
We headed out to our rental car
And met Brenton and Katie for brunch at an amazing taco place. It was so fun to see them!!!
Then, since we had several hours (aka most of the day) before we needed to go catch our flight, we toured 3 historic homes in Downtown Charleston.
First up was the Aiken-Rhett House, which was built in 1820 by a merchant named John Robinson, and it is one of the best preserved townhouses in the country. In the 1830s and again in the 1850s, the house was expanded by Governor William Aiken, jr. and his wife. The house includes also has a carriage block, kitchen, and slave quarters in separate buildings behind the house. This house is a preservation house, meaning that the structure and contents of the house were left in an "as-found" state, so there are elements of the 1980s in some of the foyers, but many aspects of the home have survived virtually untouched since the 1850s, including the slave quarters and many of the architecture and finishes. It was really cool to see, (actually it was incredibly hot due to the lack of air conditioning) and it was like stepping into an archeology dig in some parts of it.
This is the inside kitchen area and I think they said that this is was where slaves would hang out.
This is the back terrace. The stairs lead into the main house. Behind Brian and Michael was the slave quarters.
Here you can see the windows up above where the slaves lived, and below, in the green doors was another kitchen.
Here's the carriage house.
And the back lawn. I think they said that their used to be some kind of trench or something running down the middle of where this yard is now that was dug back during the revolutionary war. The details are fuzzy now, and I'm too lazy to look up more information about it.
This tour had ipods that we could listen to narrations about each area of the house. This kept everyone engaged the whole time, even Gabe.
Here's the outdoor kitchen.
Old stairs to the slave quarters.
Here's some of the rooms in the slave quarters, some of which had windows and some of which did not. This side was where the women and children lived.
They found lots of artifacts in this area. See how it kind of looks like a dig?
The moldings were exquisite inside the house, and the stairwells were beautiful. It made me wish I could see this house in all it's original glory.
This thing is a joggling board. Our various tour guides told us that these were essential in the Charleston dating scene back in the day. Many believed that if you had a joggling board on your front porch, you would never have an unwed daughter in the house. These were also known as "courting benches" because as a young couple sat on either end, they would slowly slide towards each other in the center.
We could see the history in the layers of paint and wallpaper as it was peeling away,
This window is in the library and overlooks the backyard and slave quarters. Enslaved persons were not allowed to read, though several that lived here somehow learned. The tour pointed out that it was a bit cruel to place the library overlooking the slave quarters.
I thought the library much smaller than I would have expected.
We took advantage of places to sit, especially when there were cool breezes. I had to keep reminding the kids that these tours were the things I wanted to do on this trip, and I'd made sure to already do the things they wanted to do. Mostly, they were good sports, and I can't really blame them for complaining about the heat.
There was one area of the home that was restored, and that was the art gallery, which featured art that the Aiken's collected during their tour of Europe. They had to have air conditioning in there to protect these old paintings.
Here, you can see some faux marble paint work that dates to the 1980s. Makes you wonder what people will thing of what we're doing now.
We had a nice, toasty walk back to the car, or did we walk to all the houses? I don't remember. Regardless, I tried to drink in the live oaks while I could!
The next house was the Nathan Russell House, built in 1808. This house has been restored to look as close to it did back in 1808, and it was stunning.
On this tour, we had an in-person guide. She was a lovely lady with a French accent, so somethings were hard to understand, but we loved this tour.
Gabe, however, really wanted to do the self-guided i-pod tour, so we let him.
I was in heaven feasting my eyes on all these beautiful architectural details. We learned that really tall ceilings helped to keep the house cooler.
This pink room is the music room, and the trim work was amazing!
They said that in order to restore these carvings on the mantle within the music room, they had to use dental tools to carefully scrape away all the years of paint to reveal these intricate sculptures.
The music room was kind of an oval shape, which made for some fun visual effects with this curved mirror.
And in the bedroom, we found this fun chair.
The kids tried out the joggling board at this house.
There was one more house that I wanted to check out, so we walked as much on the shady side of the street as we could.
We passed a townhome with 1/2 as its address.
The last home was near one of the old batteries of the city, so we climbed the stairs to look out onto the harbor.
And then we made our way to the last house, the Edmondston-Alston House, which was built around 1825. Most of the furniture, silver, and art in this home-turned-museum are original to the house. We were running out of time to get to the airport, and we convinced the lady to give us a quick tour instead of needing to wait until the next guided tour.
From this spot on the piazza, General P.G.T. Beaureguard watched the bombardment of Ft. Sumter. He's the Confederate commander who gave the order to fire the cannons onto the fort, thus starting the Civil War.
The kids had heard of the famous Pineapple Fountain, and Rachel really wanted to see it. The fountain was only slightly out of the way on our walk back to the car, so we decided to have it be our last tourist spot in Charleston. Just before finding the fountain, we found another beautiful spot with Live Oaks, right near the shore of the harbor.
And finally, we found the fountain. I'm kind of impressed with my photo cropping, because this fountain was crawling with people. Kids were playing in the fountain--practically swimming in it, and the photos don't show any of that!
We were hot and sweaty and it took all of our strength not to dive into the fountain with everyone else. The next time we come, we'll be sure to spend more time here and come adequately dressed. We were kicking ourselves when we discovered how close this fountain is to Rainbow Row! We could have enjoyed it for longer that day!
Charleston has these really cool sewer covers. Look at the detail on this one!
We finally got back to our car and made it to the airport. We got all settled into our seats.....and got delayed because of a storm.
This was fine except that it meant we'd probably miss our connection in Dallas. I reached out to my aunt Rebekah, and she said they were stuck in Seattle, and wouldn't be home either! So, when we arrived in Dallas, we indeed missed our connection to Salt Lake, and we made sure our flight to Salt Lake was good to go for the next day. We found a nearby hotel and went there with no change of clothes or toiletries. Yup, we all just had to sleep in our smelly, sweaty, humidified clothes that we'd worn all day long touring houses and traipsing around Downtown Charleston. But what else could we do?
The hotel provided toiletries for everyone, and we were grateful for toothbrushes, toothpaste, and deodorant. They brought up a rollaway bed for Michael, and eventually, we all went to bed for about 3 or 4 hours of sleep.
All too early, we were packing up the few things we had and heading back to the airport.
We had a layover in Denver, but then we happily flew over the Wasatch Front and spotted our neighborhood from the air.
We disembarked from our plane,
Made the trek through the tunnel of the Salt Lake Airport (which is stupid long!) and finally picked up all of our bags, which magically made the plane ride with us!
We went home, showered, and had zero expectations for the rest of the day!
We loved Charleston! Thanks for inviting us to crash your family vacation, Jen!!!!