Charleston
My last day in Charleston consisted of me actually walking around the city. Over the course of 1 and a half days I had somehow managed not to walk around Charleston’s “downtown,” but ramble around King Street for food and drinks. I had met a handful of people in the hostel and had gotten to know a few of the people and had spent the past couple days enjoying the city with them, but now most of them had taken off for different destinations and I finally had time to explore Charleston.
The walk from my hostel to downtown Charleston was no more than 25 minutes, as I took the King Street route past lots of restaurants and shops before reaching Market. At Market I headed towards the water in hopes of finding Waterfront Park. For the past two days I had been meaning to see and explore the park, and I was pleased to see that it was a quiet, green and rather large as I walked along the water. There was a large fountain spurting water at random times making certain kids excited when they walked over one of the spurting fountains. After a few minutes of observing the fountain I continued further south and checked out White Point Park & Gardens. This was another pleasant greenspace in downtown Charleston.
I then decided to take another route through Charleston to head back to my hostel. I walked around the residential area of this section of Charleston checking out different historic houses, like the Aiken-Rhett House and Nathaniel Russell House. I didn’t pay to enter any of the houses, but they all looked pleasant from their exteriors. I checked out my LP and saw that there was a notable Jewish synagogue in Charleston so I headed towards Kahal Kadesh Beth Elohim, America’s first Reform congregation. The synagogue was very large but closed so I couldn’t enter so I began my walk down King Street and back to the hostel.
The next morning I went to a market that was one of the most pleasant experiences i had in Charleston and on the road trip. There must have been around 30 stalls each selling or giving samples of cheeses, meats, jams, spreads, fish, sweets, drinks and everything else youd want from a market. I spent an hour or so filling up on the samples and then I got a Quesadilla filled with cajun fish and left the market extremely satisfied. It was my last day in Charleston and I had a long trek to Asheville that day, so I made my way back to the hostel, checked out and started my 270 mile drive to North Carolina to see the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Tags: Summer 2007 Road Trip, Travel
