Adventures of Luck of a Fool: June 18-26, 2014 Charleston Tourists

There is a free trolley system within the city of Charleston that we can catch about a block from our marina. Very handy for cruisers with no cars. On Thursday, I went to the visitor’s center and took a 90 minute bus ride around Charleston and toured a home that was built in the 1700’s. Lot of history in this city and they are so proud of their restorations.

I went to St John the Baptist Catholic Church on Sunday morning. It is a beautiful cathedral that was built in the 1890’s after the first one was lost to a fire. They had a tour after mass that I attended. Lots of symbolism that you don’t realize without the tour. The windows were “painted stain glass”. Which means there is a basic stain to the frames, but then the scenes are painted over the stained glass. There is much more detail than usual stain glass, like patterns in the material, or texture to the hair.
After church, I stopped at the City Market to stroll through and not buy anything. No room on the boat. This is a covered market area about 3 blocks long with a lot of jewelry, t-shirts, wood or glass items and some food items. So I bought Benne cookies-a 300 year old Charleston recipe with a sweet sesame flavor. And I bought a cheesy, garlic grits mix.

We went to the Charleston Riverdogs minor league baseball game on Monday night. We could take a free trolley there, but it quits at 8:00pm. The league is owned by the actor Bill Murray. I understand he is part owner of the St Paul, MN team, too. There was a fundraiser event with $1 hot dogs and $1 beers. After those, we still had to try the bacon wrapped foot long corn dogs. The game starts at 7:05, but by 7:35, they postponed the game because of rain. We were able to get tickets for Wed night and still catch the free bus back to the visitor center. By then it was 8:00, so we had to walk the remaining 10 blocks. It wasn’t raining anymore, so it was a nice walk. We stopped to look inside the Embassy Suites hotel. It is the former Citadel building from 1842, a military college. The "new citadel" was built in 1920 and has a beautiful campus.

Harbor tour: Right at our marina, there was a ferry boat that had harbor tours. So we decided to have a relaxed view of the harbor from a tourist point of view instead as a sailor. There are 4 forts in Charleston Harbor. 2 different ones had the first shots of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Charleston is the third largest natural port on the East Coast, so there is a lot of shipping done through this harbor.

Restaurants: Smokehouse BBQ and Brewery, Joe Pasta for Italian, Fleet Landing for seafood, Saffron for breakfast. At the Italian restaurant, we sat at a table at a window on King street and people watched. Dave let me in on his "people watching gimmick". He looks for people that match the music that is playing in the restaurant, either in their gait or by their attitude. Made it a lot of fun.