Friday, October 20th:
We got up early and headed two hours northeast to the Angel Oak Tree.
This gorgeous Southern Live Oak tree is between 400-500 years old, is over 65 feet tall, is 28 ft in circumference, provides 17,000 square feet of shade, has a branch that is 187 feet long, and is haunted (like most things in this area).
After taking a stroll around this beauty, we headed into Charleston. We parked close to the City Market in the Old Town area. Our first stop was the Port of Call Food Brew Hall where we met our tour guide for our Charleston Food Tour.
He gave us an overview of southern food, Gullah Geechee food, and modern twist on the local favorites.
Next we went into the City Market and got some cookies from Southern Sisters Tea Cookies. Their lemon and lime cookies were delicious!
We then headed to the Oyster House where we were treated to she-crab soup, shrimp and grits, hush puppies, brown sugar butter, and pimento cheese. I'm not a huge fan of pimento cheese, but I LOVED the brown sugar butter on the hush puppies! And the she-crab soup was so good we came back and got more for dinner 😋
[Charleston Spiked Tea]
We then went into the alley where our tour guide showed us the tabby concrete that was used to expand Charleston.
We then went to Philadelphia Alley where our tour guide gave us a quick overview of the history of Charleston.
[I love all the gas lamps - they only turn them off in the event of a hurricane or earthquake]
[St Phillips Church]
After our short walking tour we went to our next food stop: Well Hung Vineyard Restaurant.
We got a delicious braised beef that was cooked in coca-cola. It was soooo tender!
[Flight of wines]
We then headed to our final stop: Off Track Ice Cream.
[Art deco outside the old theatre]
They had a lot of great dairy and non-dairy options. We each got a different flavor and they were all very good!
We said thanks and goodbye to our tour guide and headed back to the car to grab our rain jackets. It wasn't raining super heavy but the forecast called for thunderstorms, so I wanted to grab my jackets just in case.
We met our next tour group at the United States Custom House. We had signed up for an Historical Walking tour and that is exactly what we got! Our tour guide was a very passionate and eccentric college professor. He made sure we learned a lot and he didn't want to gloss over any of the dark history of Charleston.
We left the Custom House and headed back to the Philadelphia Alley. Here we learned about the real inventor of the cotton gin: Catharine Littlefield Greene. Catharine and two enslaved people were actually the brains behind the cotton gin, but women and enslaved people couldn't have patents. Eli Whitney gets all the credit since he was able to get a patent.
I consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to US history, but I learned a ton during our three hour walk. Did you know that more slaves came through Charleston (usually via Barbados) then anywhere else in the United States? I had no idea.
We ended our tour at Charleston Harbor. Our tour guide told us about the start of the Civil War and the significance of the harbor and Fort Sumter. At the end of the tour I felt overwhelmed and a bit upset. The tour was amazing, but sometimes it's hard to comprehend the horrors of slavery.
After the tour we walked through White Point Garden and then back up to the City Market.
We ate dinner at the Oyster House, so we could get some more of that tasty she-crab soup!
After dinner we walked through the City Market one more time before making the long drive back to Hilton Head. The thunderstorm finally showed up and it made the drive a little scary for about 30 minutes. The roads were starting to flood and I could barely see even with the windshield wipers on full blast! Luckily, the storm moved quickly and we were able to get back to Hilton Head without any issues.
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