Last Minute Charleston!
Posted by Midi in Travels
Being in real estate gives me enviable flexibility as far as my schedule goes. With laptop and cellphone, I can really conduct business anywhere and with good reliable co-workers, I can even ensure that anyone wanting to see my listings can get into them while I’m gone. But my husband is another story. Tied to a more traditional sort of business, he works all the time and has deadlines which must be met… so getting away is not always easy.
This past Friday, he called from work mid-afternoon and said “I’ve got some time, let’s get out of town!” So out of town we went… after my initial hesitation since I had pork souvlaki marinating in the fridge and I had planned to grill it for dinner. ”You’re going to pass up a chance to go somewhere because you have pork to grill?”
Market at Marion Square
We drove up to Charleston – a 3.5 hour drive from St. Simons Island. Perhaps it would have been faster, but we hit a massive storm as we got into Savannah and it persisted most of the way up so I couldn’t drive at my normal lead-foot speed. I got a good last minute deal at the Francis Marion Hotel on King Street and once situated, we walked down King Street, all the way to the Battery and then up E. Bay Street… by then, it had drizzled some more and we were tired, hot and sticky (and grumpy! don’t forget grumpy!) so we began looking for a place to eat. We felt too gross to go into a nice restaurant so we ended up at the Crab Shack where we ordered beers and reluctantly ordered dinner. Once the beers came and we had a sip or two, we came to our senses. So, we cancelled our dinner order and after we finished our beers, left in search of a ‘real’ place to eat. We eventually opted for dinner at Slightly North of Broad where we sat at the ‘Chef’s Table’ – basically a low counter facing the open kitchen – and had good wine and a delicious meal.
Queen Street Grocery
The next day, we did more walking… off the beaten path into more residential areas just looking at houses… you would think I’d be sick of looking at houses but these were just so charming and interesting, I couldn’t help taking pictures. We stumbled upon a little grocery store on Queen Street in an old building and were surprised to find they made organic crepes – so we had lunch of ham & cheese crepes and went on our merry way.
At one point, we turned down a street to find ourselves in the midst of government housing… odd juxtaposition to the wealth and charm just a couple of blocks away. But we came upon this huge old walled property with an enormous run-down building with massive bars at the windows. It was really fascinating and we discovered as we came up to the front gate that it was the old city jail being renovated (for what, I have no idea!)… so I was glad we took that wrong turn because otherwise, we would never have seen that building, which was really cool…
So I suppose what I take away from all this… if you don’t take a wrong turn now and then… you may never stumble upon cool things you might otherwise have missed… is that the Doogie Howser lesson for this episode? I think it is… Oh and that it was hot… really HOT… and humid and that next time we decide to go to Charleston… it will have to be late fall or the dead of winter.
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