History Is All Around in Charleston

Geek Alert!  I love history and I love reading about it.  I'm not talking about the rote memorization of dates or the chronology of royalty.  That's way too dry for me.  I'm fascinated by the stories of people and how they went about their daily lives.  What did they eat?  What did they wear?  Why did they do the things they did?  How did they do the things they did?  Maybe that's why I chose social service as a career?  My favorite type of book is historical fiction.  Not the bodice ripper type of historical fiction, although I've read my share of those throughout the years, but books that take you to a time or place like March by Geraldine Brooks or Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

So, it makes sense that I would like Charleston.  History is all around you here and I can't wait to take one of the guided tours to learn about Charleston's past!  The only problem is deciding which tour to take.  There are so many options:  garden walks, night time ghost tours (hopefully with graveyards included), pirate tours (Arrrgh!) which could be dorky but fun, 

plus boat trips and plantation tours.  I need to do a little more research on Trip Advisor and Yelp and then just pick one.  The pirate tour where the guide brings his parrot seems like a good time to me (I can feel my kids rolling their eyes when they read this, "Of course it does").  The prices here seem pretty inexpensive after New York City so we will probably take more than one tour. Jack and I definitely intend on taking a trip to one of the plantations in the area later on in our stay but we plan to wait until it is a little warmer so that maybe we can catch the gardens in bloom. 

For now, the two of us are walking around on our own and snapping pictures along the way.  The black and white marble walkway of this home caught our eye

  

along with the manicured backyard complete with statue of another home along the way.  

 

There are many large houses here in Charleston that have outdoor porches running along the side on three stories and Jack and I love the look of them.  Due to the heat and humidity in the South I would imagine that people spent a lot of time outside on those shaded porches trying to catch the hint of a breeze before air conditioning was invented.  I can just see myself sitting on a porch swing sipping a mint julep (actually lemonade for me, I hate mint juleps) and watching the world go by.  Of course, I'm conveniently forgetting about how I much I hate to sweat and how uncomfortable it must have been for women sweltering in layers and layers of clothes. Wearing stockings.  In August.  As my sister often says, "There's the fantasy, here's the reality."  Jack and I haven't been able to get a good unobstructed picture of a home with porches yet but we'll keep trying.