stepping back in time

Probably my most favorite part of our trip to Charleston was our visit to Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, SC.  If I remember correctly, sometime in the late 1600s, the land was given as a grant by King Charles of England to John Boone.  Once a 1,000+ acre plantation, the property was booming with cotton and indigo fields, along with pecan trees, and a brickyard, all of which provided income for the owners over the years. The land was passed down through several generations of Boones, and then later sold to the Horlbeck brothers.  They established a brickyard on the plantation, and built several homes and businesses in the downtown Charleston area using bricks produced from their plantation.  Fast forward to 1950s, the McRae family bought the land and in the late 1950s, opened the property up for public tours.  Over the past 300+ years, the property grew from 600acres to nearly 1,500 acres.  Today, most of the property has been sold off and developed, but the McRae daughter (now in her late 70s) still lives in the home for part of the year, and her brother (who co-owns the property) lives in downtown Charleston.  The only portion of the house that is open to the public is the main level dining room, library, foyer, and "man cave."  Yep, not sure what that "man cave" would have originally been called, but it's a tiny brick room off the back of the house with a wine cellar beneath.  I just remember the tour guide calling it a modern day man cave.

Ok, enough talking, let's see pictures!! This place is GORGEOUS!  48 live oak trees line the drive leading to the house.  They were planted in the 1840s.

The plantation ran smoothly with the help of hundreds of slaves over the years.  Even after the Civil War when slavery was abolished, most of the slaves stayed working on the plantation as it was a secure place to work and ensured a roof over their heads.

And there are still several acres of crops that are grown on the property every year.  They still have a small cotton field, and fields of tomatoes, grapes, corn, cabbage, eggplant, peach trees, and pecan trees.  The pecan trees were planted by John Boone as another large source of income.  There used to be hundreds of them on the property, but pecan trees do not stand well in hurricanes, and so many of them have been wiped out over the years.

And the best part (to me at least), is the movie The Notebook was filmed at this plantation!  The house Ally lives in is this house (or from the outside, at least).  And the river that Noah jumps in when they are hanging out in the canoe, runs behind the home.

The picture above is the old cotton gin.  They were trying to renovate it, and it nearly collapsed, so now the wooden support beams hold it up.  And below is the dock house on the property, and the location where actors Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively were married just a few weeks ago.  (and when we were there, catering companies were setting up for another wedding).

Charleston, the Holy City

We learned that Charleston, SC is fondly referred to as "the Holy City" because the skyline is sprinkled with church steeples.  You probably can't walk more than 3-4 blocks without finding a church.  And they are beautiful! I wish I had taken pictures of more of them, but somehow I didn't.

And several of them have cemeteries on the property.  Very very old cemeteries.  We walked around one for a while trying to find the oldest graves we could, and many of them dated to the early 1800s.  Lots of the dates had deaths in the 1860s, which we guessed were probably from Civil War battles.

 

We spent a fair amount of time just walking around town, looking at the architecture and homes downtown.  It's amazing how "downtown" certainly doesn't feel like any part of Birmingham's downtown.  There are a LOT of houses in the downtown area, and they are so stinkin' cute!!  And it's so clean.  It was nice.

 

 

 

 

 There are several historic homes in the area that you can tour, so we stopped in one one afternoon.  It was built in the 1800s, and most of the home's woodwork is all original and the furniture dates to the era as well.  There was no air conditioning in this time, so most homes have lots of windows that could be opened, as well as large porches as added living spaces.

 

 Friday night we decided to eat a nice dinner for our anniversary.  We had looked at the menu at a place called Oak Steakhouse the first night we were just walking around downtown.  We originally thought it was way out of our price range, but for our anniversary dinner we decided it was worth the splurge.  The building used to be a bank for over 100 years, then I believe in the 1950s, it was converted into the restaurant it is today.  It was gorgeous on the inside and the food was delicious!!!  We even decided to order some fudge cake dessert to-go so we could enjoy it from the comfort of our bed back at the hotel.  Totally worth the splurge!

Gone fishin'

Ever since we decided to go to Charleston for our 1 year anniversary, and I saw that they had an aquarium, I knew I wanted to go. I LOVE AQUARIUMS :)  Seriously, I even had a little 5-gallon tank in my dorm room for a year at college with several goldfish.  I don't know what it is, but I could sit and stare into a pretty tank of fish for way too long and never get bored!

Anyways, so the Charleston aquarium is right next door to the pier where the ferry leaves for Fort Sumter.  So we went there when we got back from the fort tour.  Yep, we were such tourist.  Oh wait, speaking of being super-tourists...check out the "dad" socks and coffee in hand.  28 going on 40 ;)

This aquarium was very well laid out.  There were two floors, and luckily it wasn't crowded at all, so I could stand and stare as long as I wanted Greg would allow me to :)  He likes aquariums too, though.  There was lots of ooo-ing and ahhh-ing from both of us.  Especially when we got up the escalator and this guy greeted us on the second floor...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Then, if none of that was cool enough, they have this guy.  He's an albino American alligator.  The zookeeper aquarium keeper (?) told us they retrieved him from a nest along the coastline down in Louisiana that had produced another albino alligator before.  But then during hurricane Katrina, that nesting grounds was destroyed, so they don't know if the same pair of mating alligators are still together.  This guy is 14 years old, and approximately 7 feet long.  They said he could get up to at least 15 feet long at full maturity.  And it was so difficult to get a picture of his head above water...