CHARLESTON , one of the finest-looking cities in the
US, today spreads way beyond its original confines on the tip of a
peninsula at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, roughly one
hundred miles south of Myrtle Beach and north of Savannah, Georgia. It's
a compelling place to visit, its historic district lined with tall,
narrow houses of peeling, multicolored stucco, adorned with wooden
shutters and ironwork balconies wrought by slaves from Barbados. The
Caribbean feel is augmented by palm trees, a tropical climate and
easygoing atmosphere, while the town's pretty hidden gardens and leafy
patios evoke New Orleans.
Founded in 1670 by a group of English aristocrats as a specifically
money-making venture, Charles Towne swiftly boomed as a port serving the
rice and cotton plantations. It became the region's dominant town, a
commercial and cultural center which right from the start had a mixed
population, with immigrants including French, Germans, Jews, Italians
and Irish, as well as the English majority. Nevertheless there was still
slave unrest, culminating in the abortive Veysey slave revolt of 1823,
after which the city built the Citadel armory and later the military
university to control future uprisings.
The Civil War started on Charleston's very doorstep, at Fort Sumter in
the harbor. Fire swept through the city, destroying large chunks, in
1861; more damage was inflicted when it was taken by Union troops in
February 1865. The decline of the plantation economy and slump in cotton
prices led to an economic crash after the war, made worse by a
catastrophic earthquake in 1886. As the upcountry industrialized,
capital steadily deserted the city, and it only really recovered when
World War II restored its importance as a port and naval base. Since
then, a steady program of preservation and restoration not helped by the
devastation of Hurricane Hugo in 1989 has made tourism Charleston's main
focus. Despite the crowds, however, it has kept its atmosphere, while
maintaining all the energy and life of a real, working town. The gullah
traditions of the sea islands are a tangible presence here, too: ''basket
ladies'' weave their sweetgrass baskets all around the market and near
the post office, and many people black and white speak the distinctive
gullah dialect.
The City
Charleston's Historic District is fairly self-contained, a predominantly
residential area of leaning lines, weathered colors and exquisite hidden
courtyards, bounded by Calhoun Street to the north and East Bay Street
by the river
Charleston's Historic District is fairly self-contained, a predominantly
residential area of leaning lines, weathered colors and exquisite hidden
courtyards, bounded by Calhoun Street to the north and East Bay Street
by the river. It's best taken in by strolling at your own pace - though
that pace can get pretty slow at midday in high summer, when the heat is
intense. Attractive spots to pause in the shade include the swinging
benches at Waterfront Park , a beautifully landscaped piazza with
boardwalks leading out over the river, and White Point Gardens , by the
Battery on the tip of the peninsula, where the flower-filled lawns have
good views across the water and a breeze even in the sweltering summer.
Opposite the visitor center, the Charleston Museum , 360 Meeting St (Mon-Sat
9am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; $7, or $18 with the Joseph Manigault House and
Heyward-Washington House; tel 843/722-2996), is the nation's oldest,
dating from 1773 (although the original building no longer stands). It's
something of a ragbag of city memorabilia, with video presentations on
subjects from rice growing to the Huguenots. One intriguing room holds
exhibits from its early collections, where pickled snakes once shared
space with Egyptian mummies and casts from the British Museum in London.
The "head of a New Zealand chief" and a "fine electrical machine,"
however, were destroyed in a fire of 1778. The tiny (and free) Museum of
Postal History located in the Post Office, at 557 E Bay St, is packed
with fascinating stuff, such as a postage stamp bearing the face of
Confederate President Jefferson Davis that had to be withdrawn because
it made him look too much like Lincoln.
Charleston's market area runs from Meeting Street to East Bay Street,
focusing on a long, narrow line of enclosed, low-roofed, nineteenth-century
sheds, but also spilling out onto the surrounding streets. Undeniably
touristy, packed with hard-headed "basket ladies," this is one of the
liveliest spots in town, selling junk, spices, tacky T-shirts, jewelry
and rugs.
Most of the city's fine houses are private, and can only be admired from
the outside. The late nineteenth-century Calhoun Mansion , 16 Meeting St,
is among the more extreme, with its ornate plaster and woodwork, hand-painted
porcelain ballroom chandeliers and other similar extravagances (Wed-Sun
10am-4pm, closed Jan; $15; tel 843/722-8205). The Charleston Museum's
$18 combination ticket gets you into the 1803 Joseph Manigault House ,
opposite the museum, and the Heyward-Washington House , 87 Church St,
built by a rice baron. In the heart of Catfish Row, this was the setting
for Dubose Heyward's novel of black waterfront life, Porgy . Admission
to each separately is $7 (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm). The stately
antebellum Edmonston-Alston House overlooks the harbor at 21 E Battery
St (Tues-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Mon & Sun 1.30-4.30pm; $8; tel 843/722-7171).
The Neoclassical Nathaniel-Russell House , 51 Meeting St (tel
843/724-8481), is noted for its daring flying staircase, which soars
unsupported for three floors. Tremendously elegant both inside and out,
its piazza-free design also sets it apart from the other mansions. A
short walk north of the downtown area at the much scruffier and more
faded Aiken-Rhett House , 48 Elizabeth St (tel 843/723-1159), the work-yard
and slave quarters are intact, but the mansion itself has been left
almost entirely unfurnished, in fact almost empty - and all the better
for it. (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 2-5pm; $7 each or $12 for combination
ticket). An additional source for black history is the Avery Research
Center for African-American History and Culture , 125 Bull St (Mon-Sat
noon-5pm; donation; tel 843/953-7609), where there is a retired
nineteenth-century classroom and an archive of personal papers,
photographs, oral histories and art, among other items; the center hosts
periodic films, lectures and exhibits.
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Vacation Rentals in Charleston |
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Birthplace of Wheel of Fortune star Vanna White,
MYRTLE BEACH is a brazen splurge of seaside fun, an unmitigated stretch
of commercial development twenty miles down the coast from the North
Carolina border at the center of the sixty-mile ''Grand Strand.''
Predominantly a family resort, it's packed fit to burst during mid-term
vacations with leering, jeering students in fluorescent beachwear if
you've seen the movie Shag , you'll know what to expect. Fans of crazy
golf, water parks, factory outlet malls, funfairs and parasailing will
be in heaven, and the beach itself isn't bad. The widest stretch is at
North Myrtle Beach, a chain of small communities among which Ocean Drive
is the center.
South of Myrtle Beach lie Murells Inlet , a fishing port with lots of
good fish restaurants, and Pawleys Island , a secluded resort once
favored by plantation-owners and today retaining a far slower pace than
its neighbors. Between the two on Hwy-17 is the beautifully landscaped
Brookgreen Gardens (summer daily 9.30am9.30pm; rest of the year
9.30am5pm; $8.50; tel 1-800/849-1931), a former rice and indigo
plantation with an outdoor display of American figurative sculpture, and
the setting for many of Julia Peterkin's novels of gullah life. There's
also a wildlife sanctuary, where you're likely to spot alligator and
deer, and an hour-and-a-half boat tour around the area.
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Vacation Rentals in Myrtle Beach |
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The peaceful waterfront of GEORGETOWN , the first
town beyond Myrtle Beach to be anything more than a beach town, makes a
refreshing and quite extraordinary contrast, while the main street has a
late-Fifties feel. Ask at the visitor center , 1001 Front St (tel
1-800/777-7705), for a self-guided walking tour sheet to the fine
antebellum and eighteenth-century houses in the 32-block historic
district in the center. A quick stroll down the boardwalk, however,
gives all-too-clear views of the monstrous steel works on the opposite
bank. The Rice Museum (Mon-Sat 10am-4.30pm; $5), in the clock tower on
Front Street, tells how the cultivation of rice flourished on the coast
during the slavery period. On the north side of town, turning east after
the bridge, is the Belle W. Baruch Plantation ($15; by appointment only;
tel 843/546-4623). Though fairly overgrown, the plantation's original "
slave street " is still standing, complete with wooden shacks and a
church. It serves as a powerful reminder of the brutal basis of
antebellum southern prosperity, and an interesting look at the home of
Bernard M. Baruch, who gave economic advice to presidents Woodrow Wilson
on up to JFK.
If you want to stay in Georgetown, the Carolinian Clarion , 706 Church
St (tel 843/546-5191; $50-75), is a good bet, and has a pool. To eat ,
you needn't stray from the motel's restaurant, Hook, Line and Sinker ,
which serves superlative crabcakes, fish stews and Low Country Boils
until 9pm daily except Sunday.
Hopsewee Plantation , the grand mansion home of Thomas Lynch, a
signatory of the Declaration of Independence, is set in Spanish moss-draped
grounds, twelve miles south of Georgetown on US-17 (March-Oct Mon-Fri;
Nov-Feb by appointment only; $8; tel 843/546-7891). Clouds of large and
ferocious mosquitoes drift up from the adjacent river, so think twice
before visiting in summer. The less manicured, and slightly less
mosquito-plagued Hampton Plantation State Park , further south, two
miles off US-17 on Hwy-857, is probably closer to the look of a typical
plantation. The grounds (9am-6pm; free) are pretty, but the house (summer
Thurs-Mon 11am-4pm; rest of year 1pm-4pm; $2) is most impressive, a huge
eighteenth-century Neoclassical monolith built by Huguenots, yet, while
its exterior has been restored, the inside is pretty bare. The
plantation itself is isolated in the heart of the dense Francis Marion
National Forest . This heavily black area is particularly known for its
sweetgrass basket-weaving, a craft that originated with the slaves in
West Africa, using tight bundles of grasses to make intricate baskets
and pots. Despite the enormously time-consuming work and the cost of
materials, the baskets you see being made at roadside stalls here cost
at most $20.
Further south, beyond the forest and a few miles north of Charleston, is
the much-publicized Boone Hall Plantation (April-Aug Mon-Sat
8.30am-6.30pm, Sun 1-5pm; Sept-March Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sun 1-4pm;
$12.50). A visit is a sanitized and annoying experience: the plantation
may date from the late seventeenth century but the house is a twentieth-century
reconstruction used for much television and movie filming. Tours are
conducted by hapless young women in southern belle costumes, who rather
overplay the connections with Gone with the Wind . The grounds are more
interesting, with a long, tree-lined drive and another rare slave street,
this time of small mid-eighteenth-century brick cabins that housed
privileged slaves - domestic servants and skilled artisans.
South of Charleston toward Savannah, the coastline
dissolves into small, marshy islands. Edisto Island , south of US-17 on
Hwy-174, is typical: huge live oaks festooned with great drapes of
Spanish moss line the roads, beside bright green marshes with rich
birdlife, and great beaches on the seaward side. If you want to stay,
there are no budget motels, but the campground at Edisto Beach State
Park (tel 843/869-2156, fax 843/869-3022) is near a great beach lined
with palmetto trees and other semitropical plants. Electrical and water
hook-up costs $23, walk-ins $12.
BEAUFORT (pronounced Byoofert ), the biggest town, is rather twee but
the old district is lovely - offset somewhat by racial tensions and the
baleful proximity of Parris Island US Marine Base, notorious for the
brutality of its training regime, as mythologized in Kubrick's Vietnam
film Full Metal Jacket . The Greyhound bus station is two miles north of
town on US-21. The visitor center at 1106 Carteret St (tel 843/986-5406)
has details of tours around the small historic district and discount
coupons for the motels out on US-21. In town, the Best Western Sea
Island Inn , 1015 Bay St (tel 843/522-2090, fax 843/521-4858, ;
$100-130/$130-160), has nice rooms with an old-fashioned feel. Ultimate
Eating , 859 Sea Island Parkway (tel 843/838-1314), serves nourishing
Low Country and gullah -style dishes. For magnificent views of Beaufort
River visit Ollie's Seafood Restaurant where the oysters are a specialty.
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