Historic Downtown Charleston, SC....OH WOW!

We spent a couple of days in historic downtown Charleston, just looking at the lovely old homes, eating a lot of great food and soaking up all that this wonderful town had to offer.

Our first thing to do was eat lunch, the first day we got there around lunch time and had to find somewhere wonderful to eat.  We went to this place...

Fleet Landing is an old Navy pier that's been turned into a restaurant and has GREAT food!

I got this....

This whole shrimp platter was $7.95! (and OH so yummy)

When we were ordering the guy was telling us

all the fresh catches of the day etc and I'm thinking,

"you're really wasting your time telling us all that, cause

no one in my family is going to eat shark"! LOL

It was time for all of us to order and what do you

think Lincoln orders???!!

"I'd like to have the black tipped shark please".

WHAT! He didn't just order shark..well yes he did!

Here was his order....

Looks pretty good huh?

But what does it taste like??

apparently it tastes like chicken...

that was the consensus...and yes I did take a bite!

I guess it's better to bite shark, than to have a shark bite you. 

:-)

(oh and the fresh catch of the day was only $10 bucks!)

After the shock of eating shark, we decided to do something fun.

We found this place....

Yep, we took a carriage ride down the historic parts of Charleston.

The only thing missing was my civil war era dress!

:)

The picture is a little dark, but the guy on the upper left, was our driver..

he was super funny!

I'll now show you all the pics I took while on this lovely carriage ride...

So hold on!

This was one of the first homes we saw...

it was for sale. You wanna guess how much?

Try $4.3 million dollars!

Guess you have to have money to live in downtown Charleston.

(more money than I've ever seen)

I loved how the trees went up between each window..

and that house is the color of my front door!

(but my purple-y color is a little darker...not so washed out)

Just thought this one was pretty!

This house belongs to the owner of all the

Piggly Wiggly grocery stores.

It was under renovation, but if you look closely

you can see little concrete piggies out front!

(one is right under the bottom of the ladder)

:)

We rode down by the Ashley River too!

I LOVED this tree!!!

(the house isn't too bad either! lol)

Ok, see the big black washers on the sides of the building?

They are all over the buildings around there...they served a purpose.

Apparently they had a lot of earthquakes and they would drill

through the houses and put large steel rods through and hold them together

with the HUGE washers and equally HUGE nuts.

Who knew!

This was one of my favorite things we kept seeing

repeatedly throughout the ride...

homes with ivy on the fronts of their steps, or the whole house!

So pretty!

This fence has wooden pickets in it now,

but our guide said all the fences used to have iron in them before the war.

The soldiers took the iron fence parts from between the columns, and promised that when the

war was won, they would replace all their iron in their fences...

Well guess who didn't win the war and didn't get their iron back?!

I'm sure they weren't too happy....

but the South will rise again! (according to the locals) :)

After our carriage ride we saw LOTS of houses on foot.

It was actually more fun that way because we could stop and enjoy every little nuance of the homes.

(much to the chagrin of the owners, I'm sure) lol

On our walk we saw this wonderful pineapple fountain...

it was in River Park.

Here's another fountain...

everyone was allowed to get inside these fountains and play!

This is inside the actual park...so soothing!

I could have stayed in this area all day...the river was on the left....

See...

I fell in love with all the cobblestone streets!~

The cobblestone in the top of this picture is the oldest street in Charleston.

They used to say if you were pregnant to just take a carriage ride down that street

and you would go into labor. :)

This plaque talks about Rainbow Row, a row of homes

that are painted all different rainbow colors...

oh how lovely!

Wait till you see!!

I took this picture through someones gate..

Here is what is looked like when you stepped back........

How dreamy!

Crepe Myrtles are EVERYWHERE....

and I was so glad, they make me smile!

:)

The iron work (the ones that they soldiers didn't take lol) was so

LOVELY!

Look at that little balcony on the house!

More iron work and such a pretty porch!

This looked like something out of the Secret Garden.

I wanted to go in there SO bad, but I didn't... after all someone lived there.

:)

More ironwork and washers.

I took this photo for the window box flowers alone!

Just gorgeous!

Oh and look how clean the streets are..they're all

like that!

sigh..... so pretty.

Aren't they all just gorgeous!

This is called The Oaks...

it's a steak house.

If you look closely, you can tell the columns

out front are leaning to the right.

You can REALLY tell in real life, the pic doesn't do the leaning justice!

Look at the date on the gate...it's amazing

to me that all these places have lasted so many years and they're still beautiful!

I just loved this portico...makes me want one!

Someone must be very well off to live in this one..cause it has land to it too!

This is Market Street.

There are about three of these long buildings and they are

FULL of just about anything you might want to buy!

Click on the picture and see if it will get bigger..there's a painting on the building.

See the guy in the upper right corner of the photo?

He is an older black gentleman and he sits there and handmakes

these beautiful baskets all day long.

Such craftsmanship!

This is inside one of the markets.

One of the carriages we rode in..

only ours had a horse, not a mule leading.

:)

If you ever go to Charleston this is a must stop..

See the store with the red awning?

It's called River Street Sweets and the pralines there are divine!

They make a thick caramely based goo and cover tons of pecan in it.

Oh my goodness!!! You can go to riverstreetsweets.com and order your own!

I had to go to that place twice! (and brought some home too!)

Well that's about it for downtown Charleston.

I took tons more photos, but I thought these gave you the jest of the place without

taking two hours out of your life looking at pictures!

Stay tuned for our last leg of our vacation..

THE BEACH!

Hope you guys have a great week!~

Blessings and Hugs

Missy

I'm linking this to:

Show & Tell Friday at My Romantic Home