The Charms of Charleston

Cultured and refined, Charleston is beautifully preserved. Charleston's historic district encompasses more than 2,000 buildings. Any visitor should take a walking tour of the city. The South Carolina Aquarium, Fort Sumter, the plantations, and the beaches are also "must sees" when visiting.

Quick Tips:

Charleston is one of America's most romantic cities. Walking through downtown gives you a feeling that you've stepped back in time. Charleston also has a reputation (which is definately not unfounded) for good food and that famous Southern hospitality.

Best Way To Get Around:

There are many walking tour and carriage tour options for sightseeing in Charleston's High Battery and East Bay areas, otherwise known as the Historic District. Walking specialty tours include Pirates, Ghosts, and Civil War themes. Unless you plan to remain only in the historic district, a car is essential to get to many of the outlying sights, such as Kiawah Island, Magnolia Plantation, and Middleton Place.

Sometimes when you roll up to a gated community, you don't realize when a treasure you are about to enter. Such was my case at the gate to Kiawah Island Resort.

Kiawah Island Resort is impressive - friendly staff, outstanding service, luxurious accomodations, gourmet food, and golf courses galore. However, the point that made this place so enchanting was the resorts' ability to cater to both couples needing a quiet, romantic escape and families needing exciting activities that every family member could enjoy.

The resort opened in 1976, but it has only been under its present ownership since 1993. Since then, the inn and the surrounding villas have attracted couples and families looking for a beautiful, yet safe and uncrowded, beach.

Most everyone on the island gets where they are going by bicycle, reducing the possibility of pollution. In addition to bicycling and golf, Kiawah Island has a basketball court, a volleyball court, a tennis center, paddle boat operators who will guide you to dolphin viewing sites, and a playgound for children. Children can also participate in Kamp Kiawah, where they explore the marshes and forests of the island with ecologists and camp counselors. Family activites include weekly oyster bakes at Mingo Point.

For couples who wish to avoid "family time", several parts of the island are restricted for guests 21 and over only. Not that parents should feel left out. The resort offers child care for parents who need time to themselves as well.

My room at Kiawah was not a disappointment. The bed was so comfortable, I fell asleep right away every night of my stay.

Kiawah Island Inn is a pricey option for visitors, but the ammenities and service offered allow the guest to feel time at Kiawah Island is money well spent.

Best Things Nearby:
Church Street Inn is located in the heart of historic Charleston, across the street from the old City Market, which is full of specialty shops, award-winning restaurants, and an open-air market for bargain hunters.

Best Things About the Resort:
The Church Street Inn can accomodate up to six adults in the two-bedroom units, which meant our family didn't have to rent two rooms. Also, the kitchen was spacious and it had all the accessories I could possibly want.

Resort Experience:
The townhomes are all 2-story, which affords maximum privacy since the bedrooms are upstairs, and there is a half-bath downstairs to insure privacy for guests. The living room area contains a large TV and several comfortable chairs and couches to rest your feet after all that walking. The beds are very soft and each unit contains a full kitchen. All the rooms are decorated in burgundy and blue, thankfully unlike the flamigo pink used in so many timeshares!

By walking out the door, you can take a carriage ride around the historic downtown area or visit all of Charleston's attractions. I enjoyed staying in the timeshare, and it would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Charleston.

• Unit Type: 2 Bedroom
• Activities: Not Available
• Amenities: Good
• Unit Satisfaction: Excellent
• Family Friendliness: Excellent
• Service: Excellent

Nestled in the heart of the historic district, 82 Queen's beautiful buildings are situated on the site of the former Schenckingh's Square, part of the original walled city of Charles Towne dating back to the 1600's. It was 1982 when 82 Queen the restaurant opened its doors. 82 Queen boasts seven private dining rooms and a lush garden courtyard.

Each dining room has its own particular ambiance, conveying the splendor of days-gone-by. Visitng during the spring, my family chose to sit in the open air courtyard, where dining is enhanced by warm breezes, blooming Azaleas, and a stately Magnolia tree.

For an appetizer, my brother, father, and sister ordered fried calamari, while my mother and I decided to split a bowl of 82 Queen's award-winning she crab soup. For dinner, I chose one of my favorite foods, grilled grouper. Chef Stephen Kish serves up an interestng twist on the grouper - it's servedÊover grits. Being that I think grits are wonderful, and that 82 Queen's grits are even better than most, I enoyed mixing the two foods. Fried green tomatoes are also served with the grouper entree. By the time my raspberry swirl cheesecake was served, I was sure that they wait staff was going to have to roll me out the door.

I recommend a lunch or dinner at 82 Queen for all visitors. While the restaurant has a quaint ambience that whispers "romance", the restaurant is not stuffy and welcomes families. A children's menu is available.

At a table by the window in High Cotton the view is very Charleston - you look out on a busy corner of the old mercantile district a couple of blocks from the docks. High Cotton takes its name is plantation-era argot for livin' large. There are potted palms, ceiling fans made from old-fashioned heart-shaped palm fans, and mahogany shutters (left open, of course, the better to see and be seen).

After we settled into alligator-skin chairs, we looked over the menu. High Cotton spares no expense - even the Worcestershire is house-made. High Cotton is high style, but it's done the Southern way. People in Charleston wanted good food, but they also wanted a good time. Part of having a good time is the luxurious sense of ease implicit in Southern hospitality. Live jazz spices up the good times at High Cotton every Wednesday through Friday.

Since one of my favorite foods is fried oysters, I was delighted to spot Buttermilk Fried Oysters in the starters section of the menu. The oysters came surrounded by creamy green squiggles that turned out to be green goddess dressing freshened up with watercress.

For the main course, I chose seared grouper, another favorite dish. The grouper entree was completed by asparagus and tomato caper relish. The grouper was flaky and full of fish flavor, a trait sadly missing in many seafood entrees today.

I high recommend High Cotton to anyone looking for a classy meal. If you're into living high and being treated well, you will feel right at home at High Cotton. From beef carpaccio and stone crab claws to spit-roasted leg of lamb and roasted Amish chicken, there is a unique variety of offerings even for the connoisseur.

Our family was lucky enough to secure reservations to the American Food & Wine Series at Circa 1886. A special menu is available at this dinner series every Wednesday. Tucked behind the stately Wentworth Mansion,Circa 1886 is one of Charleston's hidden gems. The restaurant is named for the year the Wentworth Mansion was built, and it is home to some of Charleston's finest fare.

Each course is served with a different wine. Our first course of the evening was Creamy Carolina Trout Soup garnished with grilled oyster mushrooms. With this course we (the ones over 21) were served Gundlach Bundschu "Polar Bearitage". The soup was outstanding. Of course, it's hard to go wrong with mushrooms.

The second course, also called the "featured course", was tender beef striploin glazed in an intriguingly tart raspberry sauce. Cracked pepper risotto and basil salad rounded out the main course. I skipped the wine served because it was Gundlach Bundschu "Red Bearitage" Lot No. 9, and all red wines give me a crushing headache. Thankfully, my waiter, Jeff, promptly served me sweet iced tea when I explained my dilemma.

The dessert as the highlight of the meal. A hopeless chocoholic, I reveled in the Triple Chocolate Creme Brulee served with a Cocoa Nibs Cookies. This dessert was served with Cockburn Reserve Port. Circa 1886 had made my evening with the creamy chocolate and crispy cookies. I knew that I would not want to face the bathroom scale in the morning, either. But who can honestly resist a little binging when chocolate creme brulee is served?

I highly recommend calling ahead and reserving a table at Circa 1886 since the restaurant is so small. However, the food is exceptional and well worth a visit.

Peninsula Grill, in the Planter's Inn at the corner of Market and Meeting Streets, offers a perfect dining experience. I mean perfect! Entering the Peninsula Grill, I immediately felt like I had been transported to a sophisticated New York restaurant. The menu is exciting and creative, the food is sophisticated and sublime, the ambience is comfortable, and the service is perhaps the best in town.

Our dining experience began with the choice of six glasses of champagne or sparkling white wine and more than 20 wines by the glass. I counted more than 300 bottles of wine with lots in the $20-$50 range. The menu lists 12 specialty cocktails such as the Classic Martini, Cosmopolitan, Perfect Manhattan and Planter's Punch (most about $6).

Chef Robert Carter has created an outstanding menu that uses Southern regional ingredients in dishes with international appeal. The appetizers are divided into the champagne bar menu and starters. The former includes oysters, four kinds of lobster and crab salads and plates, and four specialty dishes.

I decided to skip the appetizers in favor of pan roasted young chicken with Vidalia Onion-Potato Napolean, Garlic Green Beans, and Roast Garlic-Chicken Jus. The chicken was still steamy when the waiter served the food, and it was some of the most tender chicken I had ever tasted.

Being a chocoholic, I was having chocolate withdrawals, having not eaten any in several days. Then, there is that moment that is experienced so rarely, akin to finding a water fountain after having been thirsty for hours, when you finally find exactly what you have been longing for. And it appeared right on the Peninsula Grill's menu: the Chocolate Extravaganza! Chef Robert Carter prepares this delectable dessert with layers of hocolate cheesecake, mousse, genoise, and ganache. The dessert is also served with a small glass of milk to wash down all that rich chocolate.

The Peninsula Grill has a well-deserved national reputation. You can go to New York or San Francisco and spend many times as much money in the few restaurants that compare to Peninsula Grill, or you can have the perfect dining experience at home in downtown Charleston.

One of the few remaining city markets left in the United States, Charleston's city market still sells everything from vegetables to Civil War memorabilia. In this market, visitors to the city have the best definition of what Charleston is really like.

While mush of the market has been turned into a tourists' bazaar, sometimes surprises find you. When browsing through the many stands, my family and I spotted a stall dedicated to the Confederacy, complete with rebel flags, Dixie shot glasses, and bumperstickers proclaiming, "If at first you don't Secede, Try Try Again." The man behind the stand was a scragly character with tobacco oozing from the side of his mouth and a Condeferate bandana wrapped around his head.

All in all, this wouldn't have been so astounding to us. We're from the South, so we have run into this type of "rebel" before. However, in the stall next to his was a black woman silently weaving baskets.

We stopped for a while to watch the elderly basketweaver who identified herself as Miss Willa. Miss Willa had spent her life making these baskets and using them in the fields. Her father was a sharecropper. "These are called fan-'em baskets, That's what we called them. You tossed the rice up in down in this fan-'em basket and let the wind blow the chaff away. Now y'all use them to store things on your table." She shook her head with a chuckle.

I finally got up the nerve to ask how she could work next to the Confederate bonanza, and she shrugged. "He can remember that war all he wants, so long as he remembers that his folks lost."

Other interesting facets of the Charleston City Market include antiques and food items of all kinds, including ( but not limited to) hot sauces, pecan wafers, honey roasted nuts, truffles, pralines, buttercreams, Belgian chocolate and salt water taffy. Score of recipe books available will teach you how to properly prepare southern cuisine.

My family spent hours browsing through all of the different goods for sale. When it looked like everyone had finally had their fill of the market, we ran across a stand dedicated to luchboxes featuring heros of the past few decades. I thought my 20-year old sister would hyperventilate over finding a lunchbox featuring the A-Team.

Ten mintues later, my family and the A-Team headed back to our hotel.

Fort Sumter, a brick fortification buit during the years 1829 through 1860 on a manmade island in Charleston Harbor, is accessible only by boat. On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops directed the opening shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. After a two-day bombardment, the small Union garrison surrendered.

Confederate forces occupied the fort until 1865, successfully defying the Union's blockade and foiling Federal attempts to capture Charleston. Charleston remained a major port for the Confederacy throughout the Civil War because of the defence at Fort Sumter.

The fort still contains a few large cannons, and projectiles fired during the Civil War are still embedded in Fort Sumter's thick walls.

Park rangers give historical talks and answer questions after the visitors to the fort disembark from the ferry. Much of what the ranger said during the talks were the facts you learn in high school history classes. Nonetheless, many of the tourists who had taken the ferry acted like they were hearing this information for the first time. The ranger was also amazingly patient and composed when one tourist asked about the "Star-Spangled Banner." "No sir, that song was not written here. The battle you are thinking of happened during the War of 1812 at Fort McHenry in Baltimore," the ranger explained.

On the ferry ride back to Charleston, my mother spotted fins surfacing in the water next to us. Sure enough, these dolphins came to put on a show for the returning tourists.

Anyone interested in the Civil War needs to visit the spot where it all began. I appreciated being able to stand in the place that I had studied so many times in history classes.

From 1741 through the Civil War, four generations of the Middleton family successively owned Middleton Place. In 1678, Edward Middleton emigrated from England to Barbados and from there to South Carolina, eight years after the founding of Charleston. However, it was not until his son, Henry, married that the family moved into Middleton Place.

Henry Middleton, an influential political leader, was Speaker of the Commons, Commissioner for Indian Affairs, and a member of the Governor's Council until he resigned his seat in 1770 to become a leader of the opposition to British policy. Henry was chosen to represent South Carolina in the First Continental Congress and on October 22, 1774, was elected its President.

Several more generations of Middletons would live on this plantation until 1865 when a detachment of the 56th New York regiment occupied Middleton Place. On February 22, 1865, the main house and flanker buildings were ransacked and burned. The next decades were a struggle for the family to rebuild the plantation little by little.

In 1972, Middleton Place was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service, as Middleton Place was the birthplace of Arthur Middleton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Then in February 1975, after the establishment of the not-for-profit Middleton Place Foundation, the Middleton Place House was opened to the public.

Today, the House Museum, built by Henry Middleton in 1755 as a gentlemen's guest quarters, is the only surviving portion of the three-building residential complex that once stood overlooking the Ashley River. The House contains Middleton family furniture, paintings, books and documents dating from the 1740s through the 1880s.

The garden, 65 acres of lanscaped terraces, shadowy allees, ornamental ponds and garden rooms laid out with precise symmetry and balance made Middleton Place the most unique and grand garden of its time. The Gardens of Middleton Place were opened to the public in the late 1920s. In 1941, Middleton Place received the Garden Club of America's Bulkley Award, and was named "the most interesting and important garden in the United States."

I highly recommend visiting Middleton Place Plantation. Walking through the gardens and touring the house gave me sense of the pride this family took in their estate and the love they had for South Carolina.

The South Carolina Aquarium is a showcase for the animals, plants, and habitats of the Southeast Appalachian Watershed.

The new Mountain Forest Gallery, a glass-enclosed aviary, contains free-flying bluebirds, cardinals, thrushes, and Eastern towhees. The area depicts a mountain ravine at a cascade, and the plants are exactly what you would expect to see in a mountain forest. Animals roam throughout the exhibit, including fish, salamander, snakes, and river otters.

The Piedmont Shoals exhibit provides a below-water view of a rushing stream flowing over a rocky outcrop. In this fast-flowing environment, the fish have small, streamlined bodies adapted for fast swimming in fast-moving water.

Nearly two-thirds of South Carolina lies in the caostal plain. The Coastal Plain Gallery includes the Brownwater Swamp Exhibit, Swamp Snakes Exhibit, and the Blackwater Swamp Exhibit. In addition to the fish and snakes visitors can view in the Coastal Plain Gallery are the presence of several species of turtles.

The Coastal Exhibit also contains turtles, as well as birds, fish, and snakes that reside along the coast. Visitors can also see the Seahorse Exhibit. A backdrop of coral and a sand-filled bottom are used to highlight these colorful creatures.

The last of the five watersheds represented is the Great Ocean Exhibit. This gallery extends through two stories of the South Carolina Aquarium.The Great Ocean Exhibit contains 30,000 gallons of water, and it contains hundreds of animals and plants. The exhibit offers many different views, such as Sandy Seafloor, Deep Ocean, and Rocky Reef.

I would especially recommend this attraction to any family visiting Charleston since there are several hands-on activities throughout the aquarium, as well as the interesting animals. Of course, all nature lovers will delight in experiencing the different habitats and getting close-up views of the often elusive fauna.

Upon stepping into the horse-drawn carriage, our family was excited about seeing the historic homes in downtown Charleston. Every member of the family rides horses, but there is something magical about meandering through a city in a carriage behind the clip-clop of horses' hooves.

Our guide, dressed in a Civil War uniform, pointed out the more famous and spectacular buidlings along the route. He also knew the backgound of each home and was able to answer most of the questions we had throughout the trip. The horse was well-mannered, making our tour all the more pleasant.

I would recommend taking this carriage tour to anyone who plans to visit Charleston, whether they are on a family vacation or a romantic getaway.

The true legacy of Charleston's rich history can be found within minutes of leaving the historic district. Outside the city of Charleston, Spanish moss still gows on trees, the Southern accent gets so thinck it's almost unbelieveable that the locals are really speaking English, and the stately plantations still welcome visitors.

The Drayton family that purchased Magnolia Plantation in 1676. Listed on the National Register of Historical Places, Magnolia Plantation has the distinction of being the northern hemisphere's oldest established gardens. The gardens include one of the largest collections of azaleas and camellias in the country.

While visiting the estate, guests can choose to ride on the nature train (complete with a 45-minuted narration), take a nature boat tour of an ancient flooded 150-acre ricefield, tour the Pre-Revolutionary War Plantation home with museum-quality Early American antiques, and view wildlife from the observation tower.

The ground of the estate and the plantation home are absolutely lovely. Magnolia Plantation is a must-see for anyone visiting Charleston, especially since the plantation is only ten miles from downtown on Highway 61.