We mostly chose Charleston because my parents moved there last August. I was also hungry. And Rob was excited to claim "48!" upon our arrival. He has Oklahoma and Arkansas to go. I am now holding steady at 44, lobbying for future trips to Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
We had a great time. Even without the blooms (we were about a month early), South Carolina is a beautiful place. I loved seeing the trees dripping with Spanish moss and the live oaks sprawling in tangled messes over fields and houses. A number of azaleas and camellias were starting to bloom. I can only imagine the delicious smell when the magnolias pop.
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| Angel Oak Tree -- estimated to be at least 1500 years old |
I also loved mingling with southerners, all properly tucked and pressed and accessorized. Women there are wonderfully feminine without being foofy. They look delicate but strong. Like they could take you down if they had to but they'd prefer their man to do it so as not to break a nail.
Of course we ate. I gorged on fried green tomatoes, hush puppies, grits, pulled pork, ribs, fried chicken, mac and cheese, sweet potato casserole, banana pudding, coconut cream pie, and sweet tea at every opportunity. My first day at home I had a salad and a Lean Cuisine. You will find me on the elliptical at my gym as soon as my travel-weary back allows.
I had done all sorts of web research on Charleston restaurants and arrived with a "Must Eat" list. While we did a great job of knocking things off my list, the best meal was at my parents' favorite cafe (well, at least Dad's favorite -- inside joke). I had a delicious Southern Reuben sandwich (which included sweet cole slaw) and the best fried green tomatoes I have ever had. Rob's grits were wonderful -- so good I wanted to kiss them and way better than those I thought I liked at the Waffle House. And the sweet tea was indeed sweet. You order tea in the South as "sweet" or "unsweet." The iced part is assumed. The unsweet arrives with a long spoon, both to identify it and to allow you to correct your mistake and add sugar to it. It's probably a really good thing we do not live in the South. I would be enormous. Blissful, but enormous.
In an effort to try to work off some of the southern fried calories, we did a lot of walking and fun touristy things. We toured an old house right on the Charleston Harbor that had a colorful history dating back to the "War of Northern Aggression" and housed two striking documents: an original copy of the Ordinance of Secession signed by a resident of the house; and a document returning the house to the family after it was seized by the government during the Civil War. Rob and I both wanted to stare at those documents a lot longer but the nice lady was waiting with the velvet rope in her hand to usher us along.
We also took a breezy but wonderfully sunny ferry ride out to Fort Sumter to learn about the shot that launched the Civil War. We toured a local winery (sweet! We didn't bring home any bottles) and a local distillery (strong! We brought home one bottle of lemonade vodka). We visited a beautiful plantation with a wonderfully creaky house, serene gardens, and a swamp teeming with cypress trees and alligators. We meandered through the City Market where I purchased some fun thank you gifts for our kitten sitters and also a beautiful tea mug and some earrings to remind me of our visit. We toured America's only tea plantation which was fascinating despite the tea bushes still being in hibernation. The fact that tea bushes thrive in 100 degree temperatures and 95% humidity suggest that a Charleston summer is awesome for tea and awful for Toni.
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| Tea plantation almost ready to wake up |
Of course, the highlight of the trip was seeing Mom and Dad. I hadn't seen them in far too long. Their move out of Reno and into Charleston was a bit of a bumpy one. Although they are now settled in a beautiful and comfy home with a screened porch that I envy, they are sort of a mixed bag of emotions about their new location. Charleston is indeed a very pretty place with warm air and beautiful scenery...and it is indeed very far away from most of their friends and family. It was with a sense of adventure and excitement and memories of spontaneous military transfers that they moved to a place completely unknown to them. And it is now with a sense of more years on the planet and a new appreciation of roots that at times they wonder what might come next.
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| Unscreened plantation porch |
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