This post is dedicated to the survivors of the Paris, France Bataan Death March and Trail of Tears Tours of 2010.
It is also dedicated to daughter #3 and her never ending love of church photography
We picked up our GPSmyCity Tour where we'd left off at the Circular Church. This was a church that was actually circular. But when it was rebuilt after the great fire, they chose a different design.
This has been a great environment for Espouses Fotograficus sightings.
Around the church
Not on the tour but I liked the colorful rotunda
Around the church
Next stop was the Confederate Museum. We did not go into it
But underneath it and running for many blocks was the Charleston City Market!
At the end of the Market is the New Custom's House
At this point, we've finished our tour but we have time to kill because we have made going to dinner a key part of today's experience. We have to be at this place before 5pm because they take no reservations, you wait in line. So I selected yet a different tour. It was quite a bit warmer today, but we went on anyway.
This is the John Rutledge House (now a Bed and Breakfast). He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
I had a feeling deep inside that if I didn't get another church in this post, I would be getting nasty comments. So here is the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.
Sadly they were doing Mass inside and we couldn't take any interior pictures
But fear not loyal readers!
We will find another church
The Unitarian Church
It had a really cool interior particularly a ceiling design I had never seen (and de-I has seen a few churches!). According to the docent, it was modeled on something like Cambridge in the UK
Finally we are done with churches. Let's move on to Jails!
The Old City Jail
They are actually going to be turning this into like a mixed use/condo thing
Which will be nice because when you step out of your building you will get a view of yet ANOTHER CHURCH.
Next - the Old Marine Hospital, now city offices
BTW if you want much more detail on what we've seen go to Wife's Blog where she discusses things in depth.
By now it is almost 2pm and we realize there is no way we are going to make it until the proposed dinner hour. So we head toward the College of Charleston where we will pick up an Uber for the apartment and rest a bit.
But Providence is looking over us and gracing us with blessings.
One More Church
Gastronomic Finale
There were two things on our 'must eat' list. We wanted to have a fish/seafood indulgence. And we wanted some real Carolina BBQ.
Dinner was to be the fish experience. Sadly it didn't meet expectations. We'd done research and asked people but something didn't show up in the comments. The place we chose was very fish/seafood oriented, but it was also a very Thai/Asian influenced place. The food was good but it wasn't the kind of fresh fish forward cuisine we were hoping for. It was very Thai flavor forward. However, it was not crazy expensive either.
They goofed up our order so they comped us some curry shrimp which was one of the better dishes we had.
Wife had a grilled grouper that had a curry sauce. You could taste the fish in this one.
I had ordered two oyster oriented dishes. This was an oyster roll. Honestly the oysters were over breaded and the flavoring on the breading kind overwhelmed the oysters.
This was the dish they'd forgotten but gave to me at the end. It is grilled oysters. But you can see it was piled high with stuff. The coconut milk curry sauce and the nuts completely covered any oyster flavor.
Oh well. The wines were good! We had a Vouvray and an Austrian wine of a grape I didn't recognize.
To get our BBQ, we stopped at a place, Rodney Scott's BBQ, on the way to the airport because we had a ton of time. It was GOOD!
We had pulled whole hog, pulled pork shoulder, beans, slaw, mac and cheese, hush puppies, and corn bread. Just a nice light meal before the long flight.
Carolina style takes a whole pig, splits it in half and smokes each half in its entirety. The BBQ sauce is vinegar based. It is very different from the Texas style that is prevalent here in NM due to our proximity to Texas.
Despite stopping for lunch, we still had many hours to kill at the airport before we flew home. I really enjoyed this short but packed couple of days and think it is a type of travel I want to be doing more of in the future.
