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Charleston SC



I road trip to Charleston, SC. It was quite a fun trip, and here are some of the highlights. Charleston is four hours away to the south of Durham. To get there, we took the 40 all the way down to near Wilmington, then switched onto I95.

Our first stop was in Summerville, a small town 40 minutes northwest of Charleston. We headed straight for the historic downtown area, and parked next to the Town Hall. I mistakenly assumed the Town Hall would be some sort of visitor center/ museum and walked up to the reception desk to ask for interesting things to do in the area. The receptionist didn't quite know what to say, except that people just walk around and look at things. That's when I realized this was a real town hall, and not just an old historic building.

So we walked around the area, and saw a candle shop called Lowcountry Candle. The shop owner makes all her own candles right in the shop. You can even custom order candle scents and colors. I had a nice conversation with her too. She retired from a job as a hospital secretary, and moved with her husband to Summerville. The candle shop was her hobby, and now second career. I thought that was a wonderful thing. Her eldest son works as NYPD, so we also had more opportunities to chat a bit. A good first start to the trip I'd say.

By this time we were a little hungry. We left Durham around 730 and arrived a little around noon in Summerville. So we found a tiny coffee shop called Sweetwater Grill and Cafe. Interestingly, all of the customers in the cafe had average age over 55, maybe 60. We were perhaps the only under 30 people in the room, except of course for the waitresses, who looked to be in high school.

After lunch, we moved on the trek. By this time we were driving south along I26 to reach Charleston. Charleston is an old town. The downtown district is very pretty, and many of the homes are from 2-300 years ago. We saw one small brick house that was built a little after the Revolutionary War (I think). The houses got bigger closer to the tip of the peninsula, and all had different architecture, shape, and colors. Pink was a very common color. It's interesting to also see the cars in the area. They were predominantly Lexus, Benz, BMW, and several Porsche. It's clear that the owners of these historic family homes, many still in use, are very wealthy. The divide of wealth in the city is also very clear. The historic downtown of Charleston essentially starts from the Visitor Center. South of the Visitor Center is the wealthy historic downtown, and north of it the slums. It's a very visible divide.

Besides walking by the sea and the historic houses, Charleston has two very interesting streets, Market and King Street. Market is literally a market, much like Boston's Quincy Market. King Street is a shopping street like 5th Avenue. Many of the top brands are all there. Downtown Charleston is not very big, so by foot we could have walked from Visitor Center to the tip of peninsula in roughly 40 minutes or so.

For dinner, we stopped at an Italian restaurant and had good filling pasta to recover from all the walking. All in all, a very nice trip!

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