Charleston

A popular way to tour Charleston is by horse-drawn carriage.  Along with a dozen or so others, we climbed aboard one being pulled by Buddy, a Belgian draft horse who looked big and strong enough to pull a railway car.  (The horse below is smaller than Buddy.)  Our driver took us through some of the Charleston neighborhoods and gave us a brief history of the city.  It was a very cool and relaxing way to get a preliminary feel for Charleston's layout, architecture, and society.

Charleston was founded in 1670 by English colonists and became a prosperous seaport.  The American Civil War began when Confederate soldiers fired upon Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, and our driver said that the action was heard and seen from homes along the waterfront in Charleston.

Charleston, like New Orleans and some other cities, has very strict rules about alterations to the buildings in their historic districts, in an attempt to preserve the look and feel of the place.  We passed large houses in one block that our driver said were worth between ten and twenty million dollars each.  So while homes outside the historic district may be reasonably priced, the choice properties are not for mere mortals.  Like Savannah, Charleston has block after block of impressive homes that I find beautiful.

Six months ago Hurrican Irma hit Charleston hard, cresting at ten feet.  That overwhelmed the sea wall, and there was heavy flooding and damage to low-lying homes, including all those mansions near the sea.

Charleston is known as a food lover's destination, especially for a style of cooking called "lowcountry".  The lowcountry region includes the low-lying areas of Georgia and South Carolina near the ocean, especially those containing salt-water marshes that are rich with seafood.  This genre includes a number of dishes you won't find elsewhere.  We had a lowcountry lunch in Charleston, but our best meal in this style was a week ago on Hilton Head Island at the Lucky Rooster, as mentioned earlier.

But our fantastic dining experience in Charleston was not lowcountry at all.  It was a prix fixe dinner at a restaurant called Zero George (so named because that is its address on George Street), and it was in the style of the French Laundry and Saison (the restaurant in San Francisco owned in part by the man who bought our house in Ben Lomond).  That is, every course is imaginative and beautifully plated almost as a work of art.  And expensive.  Yes, expensive, at least to little fish such as ourselves.  But we laugh at expense.  (Maybe we're losing it.)

The wine pairings included one great Tempranillo red, but overall were only good and not transcendent.  However, the food was sublime.

After the meal, we asked to photograph the kitchen, and our waitress took us back and took a photo of us with the chef.  A great evening.

However, Nancy forgot to pee before we left, and it was touch and go whether we would make it back to the motorhome in time.  We did.

What to make of Charleston?  A great and beautiful city.  Wonderful food.  Traffic seems awfully heavy, and the summers would be tough for us.  We heard that it's hard to make friends here, but who knows?  Perhaps there are suburbs like Mount Pleasant that would work for us.  Overall, we think it just missed our cutoff, but further investigation might change our minds.