Charleston: Day 4

Our fourth (and final) day in Charleston came too soon. We had loose plans for the day that started with breakfast, obviously. At Circa 1886 again. I got the special again, which was a potato and mushroom hash topped with two eggs. Sometimes I like savory things for breakfast, and this is definitely the way to do it.

First on our agenda was the Nathaniel Russell House. This is a federal style house and has the earthquake bolts clearly visible between the window arches. Built in the very early 1800s and owned by a super-wealthy merchant (Nathaniel Russel), no expense was spared in the building and details of this house.

We walked along the side path around to the back of the house to buy our tickets. It had a lovely little garden and a huge magnolia tree.

Here's a better look at that magnificent tree. We weren't allowed to take photographs inside (again) and it's really a shame this time because this house had my most favorite interior out of all the houses we visited. I loved the unique shapes of the rooms, the beautiful furnishings and antiques they displayed in the house. And I loved the exquisite mill-work and paint colors that brought the rooms to life.

Our tour guide had mentioned something about St. Michael's church just down the street from the house so after our tour, we decided to pop in and have a look. We had passed by this church a dozen times in the past three days but never thought to go inside. (Strangely, we did the same thing with a church in Asheville on our last trip...we never planned to look inside but a tour guide mentioned it and we decided to go.)

Built in the mid-1700's, this Anglican (Episcopalian) church has some history to it. George Washington and Robert E. Lee both worshiped here when they visited Charleston.

The church has also withstood earthquakes (although not without some damage) and the Civil War. It was said that cannons landed all around, but never a direct hit to St. Michael's.

There was a little cemetery right beside the church and we decided to walk in there too. It turns out that there are a few interesting people buried here: Colonel Charles Pinckney, a signer of the US Constitution and several governors and senators of South Carolina in the 1700 and 1800's.

This one is just a random headstone, but it shows just how old the cemetery is.

Walking back to our car, we could not help but notice (again) all the charming details that make Charleston unique and beautiful.

I love the name of the street in a plaque on the sidewalk.

And here is one of those city-issued gas lamps. Love it.

Everywhere you turn (literally everywhere) there is another gorgeous house and/or garden.

We were headed for another particular house to tour just down the street from the Nathaniel Russel House. This one was built later (1876), is much larger (35 rooms), and has a very unique interior.

This stately home is the Calhoun Mansion, which mom and I both flagged as one that we didn't want to miss when planning our trip. However, what we saw inside was nothing like what we expected!

The outside is very grand and surrounded by manicured gardens.

There were fun little duck fountains...

Charming herringbone bring paths, fountains and palm plants. We had to go all the way to the back of the house to buy tickets and then all the way back up to the front to start the tour, which gave us a great walk through the gardens...twice.

We met our wacky tour guide on the porch. He was different from any other tour guide we'd had, and his quirky personality definitely fit the house. It's hard to describe the interior, really. It was ornate, beautiful, huge...and every single inch of the place was crammed with stuff. Antiques, collectibles, art, furniture. Everywhere. It was nuts and completely unexpected...not even remotely what it looks like online. The current owners still live there and they just like to collect things. It was like walking into the house of a wealthy hoarder...actually, that's a really accurate description. It was really interesting to see, and one room in particular - the music room - was really stunning.

After that fun little tour, we didn't have a specific lunch place planned for this day so we decided to try Jestine's Kitchen. My friend, Christina, had recommended it to me and we had heard around town that it was really good. But, wouldn't you know...the one lunch we didn't plan didn't work out. I usually write down the hours and address of all the places we're going and keep it as a reference on our trip. Since we didn't exactly have definitely plans to eat at Justine's  - it was just a possibility - I didn't have that information for it. And it was closed since this was a Monday. We were totally bummed. But, we quickly regrouped and just walked down the street a little ways to this place...

Delish was a fun place to stop for lunch and rest our feet.

You can see that I ordered sweet tea again and it was perfect.

Mom and I split their balsamic chicken wrap, which was very good. It came along with their house pasta salad, which I loved. This was a perfect light lunch that allowed us to save room for a little treat.

Since Jestine's Kitchen was closed, we followed their signs around the corner to Jestine's Sweet Shop. Dessert is never a bad idea.

I got the mint fudge brownie and mom got a bourbon butterscotch blondie. We packed them up to go since we wanted to head out to do some antiquing. We ended up eating our brownies in the car a little bit later so I didn't get a good photo of them. But let me just say this...when I opened up my wrapper to reveal a really generous portion, I decided to only eat half and save half for later. Well, that went out the window after the first bite. I ate the whole thing and loved every single bite. It was one of the best brownies I've ever had.

So, off went went to find some antique stores. Unfortunately, our sources led us astray for the first stop...the huge antique store was no longer in business. We found another one just down the street but didn't really find anything interesting in there. We went back to the drawing board and consulted a few more sources...and ended up driving across the Arthur Ravenal Jr. Bridge to Mount Pleasant.

We had better luck over in Mount Pleasant. This one particular antique store was huge and we both found lots of things to love (and mom came home with a couple of lanterns from here).

The next place was just down the street and quite unique. Page's Thieves Market was a really cool place with tons of furniture and awesome junk. It was not really the type of stuff we were looking for, but it was a fun, quick stop.

At that point, we decided that we were done antiquing and we thought we'd do something a little spontaneous. (Again, I'm reminded of our Asheville trip during which we found ourselves at the Linville Falls on a whim and completely unplanned.) We had actually discussed going to Sullivan's Island but were unsure if it was worth the 20-30 minute drive over. What would we see? Well, we decided to go for it. Man, I'm glad we did.

We took Ben Sawyer Boulevard (703) all the way until it ended and parked our car. When we got out, we found this...a path just begging to be walked. So we did.

We passed some absolutely amazing beach front homes. I would take any one of them...they were gorgeous.

We kept going, past all the grass, and eventually started to see sand...and beyond that, water.

You will notice that mom has her sweater on. It was chilly! The wind coming off the water (and remember, this is the beginning of March), was quite cold. But, what's funny is that there were people on the beach in bathing suits. Seriously. There's no way I'd put on my suit in those temperatures. But I guess they were determined! It was a beautiful day.

It was so fun to go outside the city and into the quiet and lovely Sullivan's Island. The beach was just beautiful...

And a little windy...(I could have definitely used my jacket that I left back in the car).

From the beach we could even see Sullivan's Island's light house. We drove by there after we left the beach. Not the most picturesque light house, but we were happy to explore a little.

We were there in the afternoon, so the sun was still going strong. It would have been cool to stay until sunset, but it was hours away and we were ready to go back to the hotel for wine and hors d'oeuvres!

After our little detour into Mount Pleasant and Sullivan's Island, we headed back over the bridge into Charleston and to the hotel. We spent some time looking through the book of menus they have of local restaurants, admiring the blooms on the trees just outside the windows (purple!), and sipping our wine. Mom snapped this photo of me when she had a filter pre-applied to her photos...unbeknownst to her. It looked kind of crazy, so I just converted it to black and white.

Dinner that night was at FIG, which stands for "food is good." And indeed it is...especially theirs.

We had a wonderful waitress who recommended the ricotta gnocchi and sea-island grass-fed jersey bolognese for our appetizer. She said that although they change their menu daily, this gem will always be on it. As for me, I need little persuasion to try any gnocchi dish...it is a favorite of mine. And this was no exception. I cannot adequately describe what these pillows of rich deliciousness tasted like. You'll just have to go to Charleston and try them yourself.

Four our entrees, we both ordered fish dishes. Seemed appropriate being so close to the ocean. Mom had the Cornflower Dusted Snowy Grouper with yukon gold puree, cauliflower, and piquillo pepper picata. I tried it. It was delicious.

I had the sauteed gray triggerfish with Carolina gold rice grits, broccoli, benne seed, and espelette. The thing that stood out to me was just how amazingly composed these dishes were. The fish was cooked to perfection and the flavors blended perfectly. Apparently I can't think of another adjective...perfect just describes it. This is probably on my very short list of best seafood dishes I've ever had.

Although we were kind of stuffed from licking our plates clean (joking...sort of), we decided we should try dessert. We asked the waitress again and she recommended the sticky sorghum cake with calvados ice cream. That ice cream...wow. And the cake was delightful too. The moral of this story is...ask your waiter or waitress what to order. They usually know.

Well, the rest of our evening was spent packing (stuffing) our suitcases. We had to wrangle some room for our souviners. And actually, the next morning after breakfast, we shipped my mom's lanterns back via UPS after giving up on packing them. I didn't take any photos on day 5 since all we did was eat breakfast (I had the rice flour pancakes again), went to the UPS store (and had an adventure finding it), drove to the airport, and caught our flight home.

This was another absolutely perfect trip. Equal parts exploring, learning, eating, and relaxing. I loved it, and I love traveling with my mom!

Charleston: Day 3

On our third day in Charleston, we had breakfast at our hotel restaurant (Circa 1886) again. The first two courses were the same as the day before (fruit and breakfast breads), but here's the tray of tea from which I could make my choice.

And because this was a Sunday, the special was a nod to the southern tradition of brunch...a hot, crisp waffle with carmelized bananas, applewood smoked bacon, caramel and chocolate sauce and raspberry drizzle with pecans (or walnuts...I can't remember). I mean...hello! Isn't that the most perfect breakfast dish you've ever seen?

Our first stop after breakfast was a carriage ride. So we sought out the Palmetto Carriage's big red barn. We actually spotted a Palmetto employee who had gone on a coffee run and he showed us back to the barn.

Hello, there fella. The horses really were beautiful and so well kept.

Friendly and photogenic too...

Running around the parked carriages were a few chickens. Chickens? In the middle of downtown Charleston. I'm not sure what they were doing there, but there they were.

These two are actually mules and were co-pulling a carriage that was easy work for only one of them. Palmetto says they usually pull their carriages with teams of mules that always work together.

The loading dock was busy that day, but we didn't have to wait long for our ride. And the driver of our carriage ended up being the guy who was getting coffee earlier and showed us where to go. He recognized us when we sat down and he was a great tour guide/carriage driver. Humorous and fun without going over to cheesy.

This is (obviously) a different carriage than ours, but it shows what they looked like. Except ours had the two mules pulling it.

There was so much we learned on our peaceful, little carriage ride. We learned about the "Charleston single" which is what these homes are called because they are one room wide and have their piazzas off to the side (to catch/create breeze between the houses as I mentioned before. I would say most of the homes in downtown are singles.

The pineapple is a sign of welcome and is seen everywhere in Charleston (and other places too, actually). We also learned that because English Ivy will eat into the brick mortar, Charlestonians planted an alternative creeper called Creeping Fig. It is just as charming as the Ivy and not nearly as destructive.

We learned why Charleston is called The Holy City....because it provided religious tolerance from the city's earliest days. And as a result, churches of every kind were established there.

We also learned about the gas lanterns that are seen everywhere around the downtown area. Apparently, the city pays for the installation and gas to run them. All the property owner has to do is agree to have them installed on their house or building. It really does add a fantastic historical charm to the city. No wonder the city has such a program.

One final thing that I remember (but don't have a photo for) is how Charleston recovered after a huge, devastating earthquake in 1886. The city could not afford to completely rebuild so they installed earthquake bolts which basically allowed for buildings to be cranked back into their 90 degree positions. After hearing about this, I started seeing the bolts on ALL the old buildings. It's funny that I never noticed them before!

After our carriage ride, we went one block over and strolled through the Charleston City Market, which has been open since 1807. This is one end of the market. You enter through that archway at the bottom.

A huge Charleston tradition in the Gullah culture are the sweetgrass baskets. They are expertly hand woven from Charleston sweetgrass in a tradition that has been passed down through generations, originally brought to the Lowcountry by West African slaves. The baskets were originally crafted to collect rice and cotton on the plantations

Some of the baskets and other items are simply beautiful. The handiwork is amazing. Unfortunately, they have the price tags to go with it (understandably so).

You'll also find food items at the Charleston City Market...such as grits, of course.

You'll also find souvenir-type things such as t-shirts, hats, books, etc.

Check out these little sweetgrass "roses." Almost bought one of these.

Mom has found a stash of handmade head wraps, which were very cute. Both of us came home with those.

Ah, more jams and jellies. To be more specific, corn relish, bean salad, apricot preserves, pickled asparagus...and more. And some dry herbs/spice rubs on the table top. Mom also found (and bought) some dried okra chips.

Here I am checking out some more baskets...they are everywhere.

The indoor part of the market is sort of like a mini-mall and they've got some fun stuff in there.

After making our way through the entire Charleston City Market, we headed over to King Street, which is the capital of shopping in downtown Charleston. And wouldn't you know, but it just happened to be "second Sunday" when they shut down the road to cars, and it becomes a giant shop-fest for pedestrians only.

While we waited to get a table at the next door Italian restaurant, we browsed the only open antique store on the street. Sadly, the antique stores close on Sundays...even on second Sunday. (Which is crazy to me because that street was packed with people shopping.)

We finally got our lunch table (an outdoor table!) at Il Cortile De Re. The table was right on the street...only possible on second Sunday on King Street. Right away we ordered mimosas, made with Italian Prosecco, of course.

And then a light and lovely caprese salad...

We finished off our light lunch with their Tuscan bean soup, which was delicious and perfect. I really wanted to try everything on their small menu. But what we did have was wonderful.

Before lunch, I had spotted Cupcake Down South's cupcake van (it was actually a van, not a truck) parked down the road, so after lunch as we were browsing, we stopped for a little red velvet treat. I had high expectations for this cupcake because folks in the south know how to make a red velvet cake/cupcake. And it should only be done with cream cheese frosting (in my opinion). This one was right on the mark for taste and a nice little treat.

Since the antique stores were all closed and we weren't interested in shopping at the same stores we have back home, we left King Street to the throngs of serious shoppers (and their dogs...goodness there were tons of dogs.)

We headed over to the Edmonston-Alston House on East Battery that we had passed by the previous evening with it's killer view of Charleston Harbor. We slipped in just as a tour was starting.

This house had some interesting historical significance (general Beauregard watched the Civil War attack on Ft. Sumter in 1861 from the piazza of this house) and was also one of my favorite interiors. Not my absolute favorite, but almost. The piazzas weren't bad either.

This is a partial view from the second floor piazza.

This was certainly not the first joggling board we had seen...a very unique "bench" found in the Lowcountry...and certainly not the first explanation of it's use and purpose. There are many theories but no consensus. They are usually painted green (this one is actually more green than it looks) and allow people sitting on them to bounce up and down as well as rock back and forth slightly because of the rocker feet.

Those lovely aged bricks and tree with moss are also on the property of the Edmonston-Alston House. You can see that we were enjoying another gorgeous weather day since we had shed our jackets by this point.

After our house tour, everything started closing again as it was near 5-5:30. But, we still had some time to kill before dinner so we headed over to Waterfront Park to have a look.

We were not the only ones to have this idea on a late Sunday afternoon. There was a lot of activity at the park since the weather was so beautiful.

Hey, a little seagull even stopped by to say hello. Is it just me or do you also start saying "mine, mine, mine" in your head every time you see a seagull now? Thanks, Finding Nemo...it's now part of me.

This is a pretty iconic fountain in Charleston.

We began walking down the pier that juts out into the harbor, but stopped to sit on one of the swinging benches. They are pretty incredible especially considering the view you have while swinging.

We sat out on the pier for a while watching the sail boats pass by. Then, we walked back to our car to go back to the hotel.

Right after we reached our room, the room attendant came for turndown service. She asked if we had been up in the mansion's rooftop cupola yet. I was totally clueless, but mom remembered that the gentleman who showed us our room on the very first day told us about the cupola. I seriously had not heard anything about it before this moment...I was too busy taking photographs of the room that first day and completely ignored what the guy was saying! Well, we decided to go up to the top floor and find that spiral staircase.

I am so glad the room attendant mentioned this to us because it was really perfect timing...just before sunset and the views were spectacular. We walked around the inside of the cupola for a while until I noticed that there was a railing outside and a door (duh).

Of course, stepping outside was even better. We got a close-up view of the mansion's chimney too.

And a good aerial view of the amazing homes in downtown Charleston.

After coming down from the rooftop (so glad we didn't miss that!), we got ready for dinner and took to the streets again. We had reservations at Slightly North of Broad (S.N.O.B.), which came highly recommended.

Their dining room was dark like most (so more grainy food photos) and really quite inviting.

I started off with The Charleston Cocktail, which is Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, Maverick lemonade, and fresh mint-infused syrup. Basically sweet tea with a nice vodka twist. It was great. Mom had the pear sangria, which was perhaps the most refreshing cocktail I've ever tasted (you can spot it in the background of the bread photo). 

 

And speaking of bread...when I took the photo on the right below, I had no idea what was sitting just beneath that bread (which was pretty wonderful itself). Under that bread was the best cornbread I've ever had in my life. That's a bold statement where I'm from. But I mean it...I ate all of my share before I could snap a photo. It was perfectly moist, but dense. Sweet, but savory. When I got home, I immediately searched the internet for the recipe, which I found. Hallelujah.

We skipped appetizers that night because we didn't want to fill up too quickly, but after we'd tasted the entrees, we sort of regretted that decision, because after a few bites, this quickly became our favorite restaurant of the trip. What you see below is my dish...the pan seared duck breast with Charleston Gold wild rice pirlou, Brussels sprouts, apple compote and honey thyme reduction. Every single bite was heavenly. I have no more to say about it.

Mom ordered the pan seared New Bedford scallops with butter beans, okra, and tomato hock broth. Another winner.

We weren't dumb enough not to try dessert at that point (who skips dessert anyway?). So, we ordered the Sour Cream Apple Pie with homemade vanilla bean ice cream. Holy smokes. This dessert was out of this world. And you know it had to be good if I'm saying that about a non-chocolate dessert. It was so good that we asked if they had a cookbook so we could cross our fingers that this would be in there. Our waitress said that they didn't have a cookbook, but she came back with a copy of the recipe for us. How cool is that? (Too bad I was a dingbat and forgot to ask for the cornbread recipe after that...but at least I found it online.)

That was quite a sweet and satisfying ending to a day that could be described in much the same way.