Scenes of Charleston

We spent a couple of days sightseeing in Charleston, SC last week, mostly to see family, but we did get to the downtown area one afternoon to mosey around.  We walked down to Battery Park and back, far enough to give me shin splints, although 6-year-old Elmo took the same route with no difficulty.  In fact, his journey was much longer because he frequently raced ahead to the corner, then back to us, then back to the corner, etc. until we finally arrived there, too.   Not to mention that he climbed trees, poles, fences, cannons, bandstands, and even made a lunge at George Washington before Granddad intervened.

The rest of us were wearing our sensible walking shoes.  Elmo wore flip-flops.

We passed the guinea fowl, which announced our arrival with their strange calls.  A young man nearby said they’d been living in that area for over 100 years, but the articles I found online say that a couple of them just flew into town one day and hung around.   When you see the place, you can understand why they liked it.

(Watch that video link above because it offers a chance to wander, thanks to The Lee Bros.,  through one of the mysterious iron gates and see the lovely garden inside.)

I won’t even try to show you my photos of the houses or the wonderful shops.  (You can look at these by much better photographers.)  Instead, I’ll show you a few scenes that you may not see elsewhere.

Thou shall not park here.  Seriously.

The classic Charleston boot.

There were cobblestones. . .

And headstones. . . .

Two of the signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried there.  The Handicap Parking sign was mystifying, since it was inside the fence.

Here’s another one:

A headstone with my brother’s head.

There were pretty windows. . .

And pretty strange windows. . . .

This sign–with the same spelling–was in more than one window, so of course, my imagination ran faster than Elmo’s sprints to the corner.  Remolding.

Surely not this:

Crown?  Dentil? Toe?  Chair rail?  Wood? Stone? Polystyrene?

Making cheese?

One day we ate lunch on Daniel Island.  Right beside the restaurant was this sign:

We took it seriously.  Didn’t want us–or the alligators–to get the boot.

I’m going back to dignity and grace. I’m going back to Charleston, where I belong.  — Rhett Butler, in 1939 movie, “Gone with the Wind