Day 11 (cont’d)
Whenever my dad is working in the Savannah area, he goes out to Tybee Island and he insisted we do the same. Couldn’t agree with you more, Dad.
It had that nice crisp, cool breeze coming off the ocean.
After walking along the beach and exploring around town, we headed back towards Savannah and then hopped onto Scenic Highway 17 to make the two hour drive to Charleston.
Along the way, we drove through many cute towns with quaint main streets, past roadside stands overflowing with produce and motels still rockin’ their retro signs.
It didn’t take long until we were pulling into the city. We booked our two nights in Charleston at the historic Andrew Pickney Inn.
The hotel was really charming with a great British West Indies colour palette and beautiful details throughout.
Our room was lovely – lots of natural light and soothing colours.
One of my favourite features was the interior shutters. It made the whole room bright in the mornings, but blocked out all the city lights at night.
Awesome original wood floors, paired with soft rugs. I would love to recreate this look at home – or convince my parents to go with this colour palette at their Florida home. It was cozy and cool at the same time if that makes sense.
Usually when we get into a hotel, we turn on the TV for a little background noise while we settle in, maybe watch the local news to see what’s going on in the area. This time we happened to catch Forrest Gump just as it was starting – which was pretty weird since we had just been to this exact park in Savannah the day before. What are the chances? We ended up watching the first half of the movie and spotting so many locations that we’d been to along our trip.
As hard as it was to stop watching the movie (I forgot how good it is!), we decided to head out to find dinner nearby. It was a great chance to spot shops along the way that we wanted to check out the next day when they opened.
We ended up at Toast, a cute restaurant on Meeting Street. Garrett went for steak, coleslaw and fries, while I wanted to try their fried chicken with a sweet tea glaze on top paired with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus. The food was great and we loved the cornbread on the side.
Day 12
One thing I found out on this trip was that I really love going on walking tours. You get to see so much of the city you’re visiting, you find places along the way that you want to come back to check out and you get some exercise in! We had found Free Tours by Foot when we were in New Orleans but hadn’t had a chance to check any of them out, but I was glad to see they were in Charleston too so we joined them for one on the first morning we were there. The great thing is that these tours are a pay-what-you-want tour, making it accessible for everyone.
Our tour guide, Diana, was awesome – giving us lots of historical background but also insight into modern Charleston.
Along the tour we came across the “Hat Man” at Church and Broad. Comprised of sixteen hats of twelve different styles, the character was first painted around 1892 to advertise a haberdashery. Now he’s become a bit of a mascot for this little area of the city.
The pink house on the left is the oldest building in Charleston, dating back to sometime between 1694 and 1712, and made from pinkish Bermuda stone. Now days it is a gallery, but back then it was a tavern and part of the red light district for sailors in port.
The tile roof dates back to the 18th century and is the original terra cotta tiles.
The Historic Charleston Foundation was founded in 1947 to preserve and protect the integrity of the architectural, historical and cultural heritage of the city. Residents of the city were tired of seeing great buildings being destroyed to make new ones and decided to take action after seeing one destroyed and used to make a gas station (the one in this picture). Now the building is one of many maintained by the foundation.
When we arrived in Charleston, we kept hearing it referred to as the Holy City and once you start walking around you can see why. There are churches and places of worship everywhere, for many different religions. Our tour guide told us that the nickname for the city came from all the steeples along the skyline that sailors could see as they came into port.
Throughout the tour, we saw amazing iron gates in front of private and public buildings. It turns out that many of them were done by one artist – Philip Simmons. At the age of 13 he became an apprentice blacksmith and he continued creating his beauitful pieces for another 77 years. There are over 500 pieces in Charleston that he made and when he passed away in 2009 at the age of 97, the people of the city tied white ribbons on any iron work that he was known to have created. What a lovely way to honour a great local artist.
Our tour continued down to the waterfront where we could catch a breeze off the water and sit by the beautiful fountains.
After the tour, Garrett and I started the long walk in the opposite direction heading to a restaurant that many people had recommended to us – Hominy Grill. However, when we got there we were surprised to see that they have boiled peanuts on all the tables, so that was a no-go with the allergy.
Not to worry, because we found a great Southern-Mediterranean fusion restaurant across the street called Lana.
On our way back to the hotel, we popped into shops along the way and eventuall came across the theater they used to film that scene in The Notebook where they meet up at the theater. With all the movie trivia we’ve been finding along the way, it was fun to come across this by chance.
After almost 6 hours of non-stop walking, we were exhausted and spent the rest of the evening watching cooking shows on TV, catching up online (yay for free wi-fi) and then eventually going back out for a late night pizza on the patio at Mellow Mushroom on King Street. The Buffalo Chicken pizza was so good and made me want to play around with making my own recipe using my Best Pizza Dough, with buffalo chicken, mozzarella, caramelized onions, applewood smoked bacon with a swirl of buffalo sauce and a swirl of ranch dressing. Yum!
Day 13
On our last day in Charleston, we headed up to the roof of the inn to enjoy breakfast on the balcony – sausage gravy and biscuits for Garrett and fruit, yogurt and a bowl of grits for me.
With full bellies, we made our way over to the Charleston City Market to look for a few little things to bring back with us. Funny enough, we ended up leaving with only something for the dog.
/ / /
Just in case you’ve missed the previous Honeymoon Road Trip Posts:
- Part 1: Heading out on the Open Road {Nashville & Arriving in Laurel}
- Part 2: Beautiful Laurel, Mississippi
- Part 3: Arriving in New Orleans & Visiting Plantations along the Mississippi River
- Part 4: New Orleans {The Garden District and the French Quarter}
- Part 5: Leaving New Orleans and driving through Alabama to Destin, Florida
- Part 6: St. Augustine, Florida
- Part 7: Savannah, Georgia
[…] our last morning in Charleston, we headed out to the famous Charleston City Market to look […]