When Belle graduated back in May, we asked her what she wanted for her graduation gift.
She didn’t ask for a new phone. She didn’t want money or jewelry. She didn’t have some big thing she wanted us to go buy.
She wanted a trip.
And the place she picked was Charleston.
So a couple of weeks ago, we loaded up the car, headed toward one of the most beautiful cities in the whole South, and met Belle’s best friend in Charleston.
And, good Lawd! Did Charleston give us a trip?! Here’s how it went:
Day One
Hyman’s Seafood
The first thing we did after rolling into town was find something to eat, and since approximately half of y’all told me Hyman’s was non-negotiable, that’s where we went.
I had no idea until I started looking into it that Hyman’s had been a Charleston fixture since 1890. It didn’t start out as a seafood restaurant, though. It opened as a dry goods store run by a Jewish immigrant named W.M. Karesh, and the business has stayed in the same family for five generations. They didn’t even start serving seafood until the late 1980s.
The place itself was wonderful. I loved the atmosphere, and I spent entirely too much time poking around the gift shop.
Having said that, I really hate to let anyone down, but my shrimp and grits fell a little flat.
Thankfully, there was a saving grace. Hyman’s makes an appetizer that takes the same basic idea and swaps the shrimp for fried green tomatoes, and OH. MY. GOSH.
I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth.
If you find yourself in Hyman’s, order it. You can thank me later.
Rainbow Row
After lunch, we wandered down to Rainbow Row, and I’m just going to go ahead and say it now—the pictures you see online don’t do it justice.
They really don’t.
Those colorful houses date back to the 1740s, when that stretch of East Bay Street was part of Charleston’s working waterfront. Merchants kept their businesses downstairs and lived upstairs, while the docks came practically right up to their front doors.
After the Civil War, the whole area fell into disrepair. By the 1930s, the houses were crumbling badly enough that a Charleston preservationist began buying them up and restoring them, painting the facades in the soft pastel colors that eventually became one of the city’s most recognizable sights.
And that name we all know now—Rainbow Row—didn’t even become attached to the houses until decades later, after a National Geographic photo spread helped make it stick.
Standing there in person, though, the history almost takes a backseat to the color. It is one of those places that makes you understand why people take photographs even when they know the photographs aren’t going to capture what they’re looking at.
The Battery
From Rainbow Row, we walked down to the Battery, and I’m just going to say it—outside of Savannah, it might be the prettiest park I’ve ever set foot in.
The park itself is called White Point Garden, although the area was once known as Oyster Point because the ground was covered in sun-bleached shells.
Over the centuries, that little patch of Charleston has seen more than its fair share of history. It has served as a military stronghold and a Civil War fortification, and yes, people were hanged there for piracy. Stede Bonnet, the infamous pirate, was executed at White Point in 1718, and there is still a monument marking his death.
Today, though, it’s one of the most peaceful places imaginable.
Massive old trees. The harbor. Historic homes lining the streets.
It’s the kind of place that makes you slow down without even realizing you’re doing it.
The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon
Next on our list was the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon.
Built in 1771 as Charleston’s customs house, that building has lived about six different lives since then. It has served as city hall and a post office, among other things, but it was its time as a British military prison during the Revolutionary War that gave the dungeon its name.
And that’s the part I wanted to see.
There’s something about old buildings that were used for confinement that changes the way you walk through them. You can know all the history before you get there, but standing in the actual space where those things happened is different.
The Old Exchange is also one of only three buildings still standing where our founding Constitution was actually ratified.
Visiting during the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country? That was downright magical.
The Charleston Aquarium
Belle and I both love an aquarium, so naturally, we had to go.
And the bald eagle alone made the entire stop worth it.
But I’ve got to be honest: the Fort Fisher aquarium is better.
Sorry, Charleston. I said what I said.
After petting the stingrays on our way out, we realized we had been walking around in the summer heat long enough to sweat through every last ounce of enthusiasm we had started the day with, so we went back to the Airbnb to shower, cool off, and regroup for round two.
Haunted Carriage Ride
After recharging, we headed back to the Historic District for a haunted horse carriage ride through downtown.
Now y’all know I am a sucker for a ghost story, and I already knew a good chunk of Charleston’s because so many of them overlap with Wilmington’s.
Outside of one truly rough retelling of the Gray Man legend—which, as a North Carolinian, I had some thoughts about—it was worth every dime.
Our guide was funny. Our horse was sweet.
And downtown Charleston at dusk might be the prettiest version of Charleston there is.
The heat lets up just enough. The streets begin to glow. The old houses look older somehow once the shadows start stretching across them.
When I go back, I’ll do that part again.
City Market
We closed out the night at the City Market, where I fell completely in love with the live music.
If you’re ever downtown on a weekend evening, just follow the sound.
Seriously.
You’ll know it when you hear it.
Of course, I couldn’t leave empty-handed, either. I bought myself a seagrass basket and a palmetto rose, because apparently all it takes to separate me from my money is some good live music and a little Lowcountry craftsmanship.
Day Two
Day two was the day we experienced Murphy’s Law firsthand.
If something could go wrong, it did.
Everything.
Magnolia Plantation
Magnolia Plantation was one of the things Belle had specifically asked to see, so that was supposed to be our first stop of the day.
We paid, got our tickets, and were told we could catch the noon self-tour, so we headed straight toward the house.
The guide was standing there scanning tickets and letting people inside. He asked for ours right as I was digging through my purse to find them.
He didn’t wait.
He turned around, walked inside with a group of five or six people, and shut the door.
We stood there confused for a minute, then followed after him with our tickets in hand.
Now, here’s the thing.
He could have looked at our tickets and kindly explained that entry into the house didn’t begin until 2 p.m.
That’s all he had to do.
He didn’t.
Instead, he marched us back outside and proceeded to chastise us in front of a whole crowd of people waiting to have their own tickets scanned.
I didn’t say a word.
I just turned around and walked off while he did his very best to make us look ignorant in front of everybody standing there.
And maybe that sounds petty, but I didn’t pay that kind of money to be treated that way on my young’un’s graduation trip.
So I went back to the ticket booth, got our refund, and we headed next door to Drayton Hall.
Drayton Hall
Now, when we paid at Drayton Hall, nobody mentioned that the house isn’t restored.
It’s preserved.
And those are two very different things.
Built in 1738, Drayton Hall is the oldest preserved plantation house in the country still open to the public. Which sounds absolutely wonderful until you realize that means no air conditioning, no antique furniture, and none of the gorgeous trim and furnishings you might expect to find inside a historic house.
What you get instead is a genuinely falling-down old house.
In the dead heat of late July.
In Charleston.
We spent more than an hour wandering through it.
Still beautiful, though.
Y’all know I love a falling-down place.
But I typically explore them for free, and prefer to do it when it’s not hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk.
There was one moment that made the entire thing worth it, though.
Standing on those massive back steps, looking out across the Ashley River.
I don’t know how else to explain it except to say that the view stopped me.
Out of everything we saw that day, that might be the thing that stays with me longest.
Angel Oak, Wrong Turns, and Rain
From there, it was one mishap after another.
We stopped for fast food, and they left part of our order out of the bag.
Then we drove all the way out to Angel Oak, only to find the park closed because of lightning.
Now, we had come too far to just turn around without even looking at the thing, so we did what any determined group of tourists would do.
We took our pictures through the fence.
Not exactly the experience I had envisioned for a tree estimated to be somewhere between 300 and 500 years old and one of the oldest living oaks east of the Mississippi, but we got to see it.
That counts.
Then Apple Maps sent us to the wrong beach entirely.
And by the time we figured out where we were actually supposed to be, the rain had already beaten us there.
Belle got exactly one dip in the ocean before the lightning rolled back in.
She made it back to the car by about two seconds.
Maybe less.
King Street
By that point, I was determined that Murphy was not going to win the whole day.
So we went back to the Airbnb, regrouped, and headed to King Street, because there is simply no possible way to put two teenage girls on King Street and not find some kind of happiness.
They found theirs at Louis Vuitton.
They just couldn’t afford any of it.
LOL.
Henry’s
That night, we ate at Henry’s, and y’all.
The jambalaya was the best I have ever had in my entire life.
I’m serious.
I have thought about that jambalaya more than once since we got home.
After the kind of day we’d had, though, none of us had much fight left in us. We went back to the Airbnb, played a round of Cards Against Humanity, and called it a night.
Day Three
On our last day, the plan was Folly Beach followed by Fort Sumter.
The weather, once again, had other plans.
We got maybe an hour at the beach before the bottom fell out on us.
Then we found ourselves stuck in traffic on the island for nearly an hour trying to get back off of it.
By the time we made it back into Charleston, we were tired, hungry, and cranky.
Which is never the best combination when you’re trapped in a car together.
O-Bar
Eventually, we landed at the O-Bar, where I decided to give Charleston shrimp and grits one more chance.
And thank God I did.
It did not disappoint.
In fact, I’m going to say something that might get me banned from Georgia.
It was even better than the shrimp and grits I had at the Shrimp Factory in Savannah.
Sorry, Georgia.
The rain followed us the rest of the way back into Charleston, and after two straight days of bad luck, none of us were interested in testing Murphy one more time.
So we dropped off Belle’s bestie and made one last pass down King Street to window shop.
St. Mary of the Annunciation
On the way, we wandered into St. Mary’s.
My mama lived in Charleston briefly back in the early 1980s and went to Catholic school downtown. She’s always talked about how beautiful the church was.
Established in 1789, St. Mary’s is the oldest Catholic parish in the Carolinas and Georgia. The building standing there today was rebuilt after the Great Charleston Fire of 1838.
I wanted to see it for myself before we pointed the car back toward North Carolina.
And I’m so glad we did.
There’s something about seeing a place you’ve heard about your whole life, especially when it belongs to somebody else’s memory of a time before you.
For my mama, it was part of the Charleston she knew when she was young.
For me, it was the last thing I saw before we headed home.
Charleston gave us sunburn and lightning, a rude guide and a phenomenal falling-down house, the best jambalaya I’ve ever eaten, and more memories than I could probably fit into one little blog post.
And really, that’s what the whole trip was about.
It wasn’t about whether everything went according to plan.
Thank God, because nothing did.
It was about taking my girl and her best friend on one last big adventure before they scatter off into whatever comes next.
A year from now, I doubt any of us will remember the stress or the tears from that one perfectly awful day. We’ll remember me running through the rain in a white dress. We’ll remember standing on the back steps of Drayton Hall and looking out over the Ashley River. We’ll remember Belle getting exactly one two-second dip in the ocean before racing a thunderstorm back to the car—and winning.
Somewhere between the shrimp and grits, the thunderstorms, and Murphy’s Law, we ended up with exactly the trip we were supposed to have.
