Friday was our first full day to wander around Charleston and wander we did. We are very pleased to have chosen, and gotten into, the Maritime Center with it’s 21 slips. It’s a very small place compared with City Marina on the other side of the city with it’s 100s of slips. While this spot is a bit rolly, it is so convenient to town, shopping and the historic district that the occasional bumping isn’t a real problem.
We walked around the city much of the day and enjoyed seeing all of the wonderful homes, most in nearly perfect condition. I understand that the “hysterical society” is quite aggressive in making sure that owners don’t allow their homes to be altered or managed badly. I would find that intrusive but it would be nice to know that everyone has to keep things just so. I do like “just so”. And just so they are. Keeping these, mostly white, homes looking perfect takes a massive amount of effort so it’s a rare block that doesn’t have some sort of home repair going on. Masons, carpenters and groundskeepers are everywhere and the loving care and open check books really shows.
I can’t begin to describe the scale and number of beautiful homes but perhaps this random mix of photos will give you an idea of just how amazing it is. I do love porches, so perhaps that’s a good place to begin this tour. If one porch is good surely two is better and there are plenty of homes with multiple porches. 
There are many curved porches. I just can’t imagine what it costs to maintain such a home. No vinyl siding here. 
One of the grandest homes is now the Two Meeting Street Inn. We tried to have afternoon tea here but it’s only available to guests. Everything about this house cries out “wow, I am really expensive to maintain!!!” It’s a beautiful place and had better be as it’s not an inexpensive place to stay. One night costs about twice what we are paying for an entire week at this marina. Somebody has to pay for all that white paint.
The turret is an amazing piece of construction.
Ok, no porch here to speak of but what a home. Someone told us that many of these homes are only used for a few months a year. Yikes!!!
The home above looks out on this park at the Battery at the southern tip of Charleston. What a riot of live oaks. Actually, as they are all lined up,perhaps “riot” isn’t a good word to describe this carefully manicured vista. I am trying to imagine living in an area with this sort of landscape out in front of my home. Hmm… The scale of all of this is a bit overwhelming.
While white is the color of choice for homes here, I expect that this one was always painted a color other than white as getting a color change past the local historical society would be nearly impossible. It also may be the largest porch we saw. If the outside is this elaborate I can only imagine how the interior must look.
Some of the homes look like they have been heavily updated with new siding and detail work like this one. Others show generations of paint. This one is downright modest. One must have pity or the owner who’s porch is perhaps less than 100′ long. How demoralizing that must be.
One particularly fun place to visit is the city marketplace. There are many vendors selling everything from food to baskets. Brenda’s very focused on one of the sweetgrass baskets and it’s fun comparing the offers from all of the vendors. You enter the market through this front door and wander for what seems like 100s of yards through packed stalls. 
We enjoyed a late lunch in this lovely courtyard restaurant. Perhaps not the most artfully composed photo but the lunch was great. I can almost hear our son Christopher saying “dad, you can’t get good metering with your camera on auto mode”. Oh well…
Last evening we had dinner at the Charleston Yacht Club compliments of the local SSCA cruising station hosts Emmett and Mecca, who are now living ashore after eight years of cruising. They sold their boat last year which must have been tough. Emmett and Mecca are one more example of how helpful the community of cruisers have been to us on this trip. The club is informal and very friendly. We were introduced to many nice folks and had a great evening and were, once again, shown what southern hospitality can be.
Tours by horse drawn carriage is a popular pastime for tourists. As we are in fact, tourists, we will be taking a ride in one of these before we leave town on Thursday. It’s fun to walk by the stables and see all of the carriages.
Oh yea, speaking of “a horses ass”, this shot of me making our bed yesterday morning seems to evoke something equine. Getting under the mattress is the only way that I can get the sheets secure and tight. And, anyone who knows me realizes that I like things just so. Tight is good. Who says that I don’t put photos of myself on the blog. 
So, that does it for today. Off to do some more sightseeing.