So every year, I try to make it to at least one new state. I had already been to Alaska this year, but planned a last minute road-trip to add some more new states to the list! I ended up going to the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville, the Smoky Mountains, Savannah, and Charleston. The Smoky Mountains have been on my short-list of top places I wanted to see for awhile now and I wanted to see what all the hype was about Charleston since it keeps topping the lists for best places to visit in the world! I often feel like places that are constantly hyped up don’t really live up to the hype. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t reallllly see why Charleston is best place in the world? It felt like a typical city, but I did definitely appreciate the architecture of the city. And it is definitely a cute little Southern place, but doesn’t compare to Savannah. I absolutely lovedddd Savannah, but I will save that for another post. But back to Charleston. When doing my initial research, I honestly couldn’t find a lot of recommendations on things to actually do. Most posts about Charleston concentrate on where to eat basically, but y’all, I wanna see some unique things! So here is my list of 8 things to do in Charleston in between eating grits and pralines and hitting up the bars.
1. The Angel Oak Tree
So just outside of the historic city is the famous Angel Oak Tree! It is estimated to be between 400-500 years old, but some say it could be as old as 1400 years old. It is often referred to as being the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi. However old it is, this tree is certainly massive and impressive! Definitely worth seeing.
2. The Charleston Tea Plantation
Not far from the Angel Oak Tree is the Charleston Tea Plantation which is literally the only tea plantation in America. The plantation has a really pretty drive lined with Oak Trees that leads you to this building with a huge porch covered with rocking chairs. Inside the building, you can try (for free!) a bunch of different hot teas and iced teas and peek in to see the machines they use to make the tea. They actually only use the first three inches of leaves on the tea crops to make tea. Black, Green and Oolong tea are all made from the same leaves, they are just manufactured differently. The whole plantation only has 4 people who maintain the crops and make the tea and the leaves are taken off with a big machine. Okay I won’t bore you with anymore tea talk, but you can take a trolley around the plantation and see all of the tea crops and its just overall really pretty. And as I mentioned, this is the only place in the US that you can do this. Otherwise, if you wanna go to Sri Lanka or China to see a tea plantation, you probably have to take a hot sweaty bus for hours to some hot sweaty fields. So its cool to see this here. At the very least, you get to drink a bunch of free tea on an adorable porch.
3. Shopping
So upper King Street has all of boutiques and the main shopping stretch. It also has antiques. Then there is the Charleston City Market which is one of the oldest public markets and has a lot of locally- made goods. And then there is the Farmer’s Market. Its only held every Saturday in peak month but has a lot of local delicious foods like crepes, praline pecans, and Benne Wafer cookies.
4. Battery Park
So the battery area is where I found Charleston to be the most charming. There is a cute waterfront park and you can take a stroll along the harbor and catch some pretty views featuring southern mansions, cannons, cannon balls, oak trees, palmettos, statues, a gazebo, and incredible views of Fort Sumter, Castle Pinckney, and the Sullivan Island Lighthouse.. Around Battery is where you’ll find the prettiest houses and architecture! There are also quite a few house museums, discussed below.
5. Historic Charleston Houses
I actually think its kind of fun to see what homes used to look like a few hundred years ago. Charleston has a handful of house museums that are open to the public from the 19th and 20th centuries. I chose to visit two out of the six. I wanted to visit the Aiken-Rhett house because it has most of the original 19th century wallpaper, paint and furniture. It was the best example of conservation for a house. It also has a random art gallery, which I have never seen in an historic house.
The second one I picked was supposed to be the prettiest house— the Nathaniel Russell house. This house was restored to what it looked like during 1808 and has a famous free-standing staircase, meaning it wasn’t fixed to the walls and it didn’t use any nails. What was also interesting is at this house they showed us what was used as "bedding" inside the blankets for different groups of people and passed it around. They used cotton in the bedding for the adult, boiled spanish moss for the children, and pine needles for the slave bedding.
I found it interesting that in houses, interactions between slaves and owners were more intertwined. Sometimes the slave who looked after the children would sleep in the children's room on the floor. The slaves who worked in the home, as opposed to the fields, sometimes shared the same food so that the cook wouldn't have to make a different meal, but a cheaper version IE chicken broth and rice as opposed to whole chicken. Another thing I found interesting was the obsession with having everything symmetrical in the homes. If one side had a door, they would make a fake door just so maintain symmetry. And it was interesting how fancy the "public" rooms were compared with the plainness of bedrooms and other rooms only the families would be allowed in. It makes sense when you think about how many people conducted business in their homes and not in an office like today.
6. Rainbow Row
Rainbow Row is pretty well-known in Charleston. Its located right near the Battery area. After the Civil War, this area of buildings were pretty much slums. The Preservation Society purchased three of these row-homes and painted them paint and then subsequent owners followed suit in painting their homes bright pastel colors. So this strip of row-homes became known as Rainbow Row! It gets a little difficult to photograph the houses with all the traffic and tourists taking pics so maybe it would be best to try to less popular time to take a look.
7. Carriage Ride
A carriage ride is a fun way to take in the sights of Charleston. There are several carriage routes, however, which are operated on a lottery system to control the amount of carriage traffic in the city. This means the carriage driver doesn’t know what route he will take you until he is told by the city. So you aren’t really in control of what you will see. My carriage ride took me through Battery, which I mentioned above, so I got to view all of the cute historic mansions. Palmetto Carriages is supposed to be the best company so that’s the one I went with.
8. Plantations
I wanted to visit plantations in Charleston because where else can you do that? There are several options, but I choose to visit two. The first one I visited was Drayton Hall. Drayton Hall Plantation is the oldest preserved plantation house in America that is open to the public, meaning it's original and there have not been any restorations so it has really cool ruins inside. The British took over the house during the Revolutionary War and then so did troops during the Civil War. It was only plantation in the area that wasn't destroyed during the Civil War. There isn’t any furniture in the house and it has remnants of when it was invaded like some graffiti and brick walls where some of the faux doors were removed because troops thought there were treasures behind there. This plantation also has one of the only original hand carved plaster ceilings in the US. Very recently they opened up the basement for tours, so it has a really erie vibe down there.
The second plantation I went to was Middleton Plantation & Gardens. The gardens were absolutely gorgeous and huge! I chose not to go into the plantation house, as I read it wasn’t really worth it. But I loved walking around the grounds. It felt like I was in Alice and Wonderland. They also have a really amazing restaurant with original low-country recipes like this low-country captain dish that was to die for! Basically had braised chicken, curry, bacon, currents and slivered almonds served over rice. Another plantation I didn't visit (Boone) was used as Allie's summer house in The Notebook.
FOOD
Speaking of food, of course I do have to mention the food and restaurants in Charleston since that is basically what its known for. So let’s talk about Husk. Husk is probably the most fussed about restaurant where tourists have to go. So I went. And it was definitely worth the hype! I did call more than a month in advance and reservations for that Friday were already full, but they said they do have walk-ins, only you would have to wait awhile for a table. So after I put my name in, I went about a block down to this cute little wine bar called Bin 152. The perfect place to sit by the window and have some wine and cheese before dinner. Husk texted me about 45 minutes later and we got to sit on the outside balcony which was such a cute atmosphere. And my steak was perfect and the praline ice cream was amazing. So I love Husk!
The second place worth mentioning is Peninsula Grill. This restaurant has an amazing courtyard with beautiful trees and gas lights! So pretty. The food is really good, too, but more on the pricey side. There were a lot of flies, but other than that, I loved the atmosphere. And I think I have mentioned before that I usually prefer atmosphere over the food.
Another honorable mention would be Callie’s Hot Biscuits. Very popular, pretty long lines, but such amazing biscuits! So usually what I do when I visit cities is check out popular food tours on tripadvisor and then find out where the food tour takes people and then pick some of those places to try since I would rather try a bunch of smaller food items then a big lunch, especially when I have dinner reservations later. Callie’s was what people raved about the most so I went there and got several amazing biscuits.
So that was Charleston! I really enjoy seeing unique things when I visit places so that’s why I wanted to see the plantations and historic houses since they are pretty unique to Charleston. And I thought I would share actual things to do since people mainly talk about the food there. Definitely glad I visited Charleston! My favorite detail was the little gas lights everywhere. OMG was it hot though! So much humidity even though it Is October. Next time I will tell you about how I have a huge crush on Savannah and why its my fav.
