Charleston

21.06.2008 - 22.06.2008 32 °C

We arrived in Charleston at about 8 at night, had a great dinner and noticed how nice everyone was – as the kids said, “not fake nice like the people in Disney World but really nice.” This must be southern hospitality. Charleston is a wonderful place – very good food, amazing architecture, so much history. The morning after we arrived, we walked along the sea wall and looked out at Fort Sumpter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Peter climbed on the huge cannons in the park across the street, and we enjoyed walking through the old neighborhoods and seeing the beautiful houses. We went on two very interesting house tours, hearing about Civil War history and domestic history. George Washington was a guest in one of the homes for a week and it was really great to walk on the same floors where he must have walked.

On our way north, we stopped at the Boone Hall Plantation, a working plantation that has been in operation for more than 300 years. As we drove toward the house, we went through a long tunnel of gorgeous old live oaks, dripping with Spanish Moss. I had heard that this was where Gone with the Wind was filmed but that wasn’t correct, as it turned out. This was the place where North and South was filmed – not such a big deal, but the plantation was really something to see. The various owners grew Indigo (the plant that produced the dye), pecans, cotton, fruit. The plantation was also a huge manufacturer of bricks, all made by slaves. During the house tour we walked on floors that were made of these bricks and saw the small brick structures in the side yard that were the slave quarters (pretty miserable stuff). But of course the house was beautiful, though not all that grand. It turns out that plantation homes typically are not so magnificent as Gone with the Wind makes them sound. (By the way, we’re half way through our audio version of that book – only 18 more tapes to go!)