Historical tour of Charleston
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Fri 30 Nov 2012 16:35
At first the houses look a bit odd, as even the largest and grandest are built side on, all have piazzas on each storey, which then face onto the back of the next door house. A piazza, by the way, is just the Charleston word for porch, they are very posh here!! The reason for building houses this way is so that they benefit from the breeze coming over from the Ashley River.
Whilst the tour was undoubtedly very interesting, and the tour guide very informative, he had a rather unfortunate accent and a slightly monotonous tone which had the effect of sending us all to sleep at various points in the tour. When we stopped off at the waterfront park to see Fort Sumter, it was a relief to get off the bus into the fresh air to waken ourselves up again!
Whilst touring round we had the opportunity to go into one of the Mansions for a short tour. The one we visited was the Edmonton house where General Beauregard, leader of the Confederate Army, watched the action taking place over at Fort Sumter three miles out to sea - quite why he wasn't more directly involved I'm not sure!
All of the big homes here have separate outbuildings for the kitchens and also slave quarters. The kitchens were separate due to fire risk.
After the tour we had a wander round Downtown Charleston and through the City Market. I was expecting a food market, but it was more arts and crafts, paintings and handmade jewellery and such, actually with the women weaving baskets, it was very much like a Caribbean market.