Charleston South Carolina

The front of the hotel with a cool horse fountain
This is the new bridge in Charleston

This is the city skyscraper that was built in the early 1900s the city passed an ordinance against tall buildings in the 1920s to keep any other skyscrapers out. It is an 8 story building!

This is the aircraft carrier Yorktown
Christa is walking through a typical Charleston neighborhood

These are the flags at Fort Sumter
This is the interior of Fort Sumter

George Washington attended services here.
This is the outside of the same church. The steeple was used in the revolutionary war as a lookout and signal tower as well as the civil war. During World War II it was used as an air raid tower.

These houses are S.O.B.(South of Broad) They sell for millions of dollars

This is a cool pineapple fountain in a park along the battery

This is the walkway along the battery where two rivers come together into the bay

We went to Charleston for an accounting conference. Christa was in the conference all day and Daryl was touring the city. It is an amazing place. Charleston was founded in 1690 and George Washington stayed in a house there for a week and attended a church while he was there. The houses are really beautiful. They are unique in the fact that the street side is only one room deep and the porches are on the sides of the houses overlooking walled gardens. The porches are called piazzas and all of the doors that are on the street do not enter the houses, but allow access to the piazzas. Daryl visited Fort Sumter and discovered that it is on a man-made island. Barges toted tons of marble and granite from Vermont to Charleston to build the island at the entrance of the bay. It was very interesting to see where the first shots of the civil war were fired. Charleston also has more churches than any other city. Apparently to be buried in the city you had to be a member of a church. Some of the new church buildings were built around 1820. It was amazing to see how well preserved the city is. Parking lots are hidden behind buildings and carriages are gracing the streets. Daryl got to see Cabbage Row, (the inspiration for the opera Porgy and Bess). He also did ancestral research at the Historical society.

We stayed at the Charleston Place Hotel, it is an Orient Express Hotel (which translates into tripling all of the prices). Apparently it is where all of the celebrities stay when they travel to Charleston. The room was really nice with an inlayed wood entry hall floor. We were delayed six hours when going to Charleston. The Waco flight was delayed for an hour because someone broke the overhead bin and they couldnt close it. This meant that Christa didnt get to tour much of the city.