Downtown Charleston, SC
June 2, 2008
We arrived at Charleston and took off walking towards what we hoped to be “ Market Street”. Jean thought I had the GPS but I didn’t and we had no maps. We met a pedicab after a short ways and decided to hitch a ride. A pedicab is bicycle powered carriage. It was very hot and I felt sorry for the guy doing the peddling, but I guess that is his job. He sure was working hard. He dropped us off and we were ready to explore.
First stop Market Street
The famous Charleston basket weavers were hard at work. I wish I had a picture to show you of them, but when Jean asked if we could take a picture the woman growled a NO! We thought we would be smart and just stand afar and zoom in, so we left the first building and went to the next. I had the camera and being as sneaky as I thought I could be, I turned it on. Now you know I can't hear but I guess that camera makes an awful racket when you turn it on cuz the minute I did, every basket weaver in the place gave me the evil eye...there was one table that had a bunch of odd looking bottles on it and a woman behind it...well bless her hawt...anyway I decide that we really didn't need a picture of a basket weaver.
They had a lot of neat stuff in the "Market" but it was all pretty expensive, we didn't buy anything but it was fun to go through it.
After we toured the "Market" we decided to head on down to the historic part of town. After asking directions, we decided we could walk. We noticed right off that no one was walking in the direction we were headed...but we walked...and we walked...and we walked...and we walked...
and we rested..then we walked..and walked some more. Never ask a local how far it is to something, you will get that "just down there a little ways" kind of thing.
After 10 blocks or so...can you say PAIN?...we finally arrived. We had great knowledge by this time as to why no one was walking! And it just made us really excited and happy to think that we would get to walk all the way back!...NOT! There has to be a better way!
Below is a slide show of some of the historic places we saw
Such a romantic place, some folks just can’t help themselves…
A better way...
You know Charleston has many modes of transportation, you can drive of course, but there are horse drawn carriages
and there are the pedicabs and they even have these little green trolley things that will take you about anywhere you want to go. We seen a trolley car and it didn’t take us long at all to decide this was the ticket back to “Market Street”.
I boarded the trolley and sat down, Jean being the smart person that she is, decided to ask how much it would cost. The guy replied what Jean thought him to say as 66…Jean said 66 dollars?!? Funny thing is by this time, we were more than willing to pay that. You couldn’t have gotten me off that trolley, no way no how! Actually it was 60 cents each. Now when I did a little math, I figured that for the 60 cents that I saved walking 10 blocks down didn’t nearly cover the cost of the pain pill or margarita that I was so looking forward to at this point. Jean's new pink flip flops with the plastic between the toes were grabbing her attention by now too.
After getting back to “Market” Street we ate at Bubba Gumps Shrimp Company and then called our pedicab feller and headed back to the dock to catch our taxi home. It was a great day with lots of memories and we are looking forward to going back...with a few more smarts about how to do things. You can catch one of the trolleys to take you about anywhere and that is the cheapest form of transportation there.