Day 3- Still in Charleston

Today by far was my favorite day. (I know it’s only day three, but still). We had a great opportunity to travel around Charleston on a private tour bus. Let me first say that our tour guide made the experience much more personal, educational and factual. He was great at answering any questions that we had and even entertained us with singing, storytelling, jokes and legends. Since it’s hard for you to get a good sense of what our tour guide was like since you’re not with us, but think of him as a cross between Cleveland Brown from the cartoon “Family Guy” and Forrest Gump. But to tell you the truth, I wish he was our bus driver for the entire trip.

So! What we got to see today…well for a period of 90 years Charleston was THE richest city in the United States. I won’t go into the details of how it became this way, but traveling around you can see this wealth. Many of the homes go for well over $1 million with the average home at over $600,000. Even the cities projects look somewhat nice, especially compared to Schenectady New York. (Did I mention how warm it is in South Carolina?). Theres a lot of history on the streets of Charleston, the homes, the cobblestone streets, even the trees. We ended our tour of the city at the Citadel, a military college started in 1842 for the sole purpose of providing the city protection from slave insurrections. (Ohh the irony). But the best part was being able to see my friend Joe Collins at the Citadel, although for only 45 seconds. Seeing the Citadel campus in purpose was pretty cool. It reminds me of a castle. A couple of my classmates must not have understood where we were because they got off the bus and immediately tried to walk into a restricted area and were denied by a soldier. Absolutely hysterical…maybe not for you, but I was there…it was funny.


After stopping at the Citadel we headed to Mt. Pleasant to eat at a restaurant that serves Gullah Cuisine. For those of you who don’t know what Gullah food entails, think Soul Food with the addition of a variety of different rices (INCLUDING RED RICE…I don’t know why I’m excited…I didn’t eat it, it just seems like we talked about it a lot). This particular restaurant was buffet style and had some amazing bread pudding.

The next part of the tour brought us to one of the many Sea Islands just off the coast of South Carolina. When I say just off the coast I mean it, it was like driving on a bridge over a creek. It was on the first island that we visited the Mcleoud Plantation. Although it was much smaller (in terms of acreage) than it originally was, visiting this plantation was eye opening. What made this place special was that although it was owned by the Charleston Historical Society, it was not a museum, there was no gift shop, and admission was free. For a moment it felt like we had traveled back in time to the 18th and 19th century. Everything seemed untouched by today’s society