Downtown Charleston

We spent Tuesday in downtown Charleston.  It was so quaint and gorgeous and clean!  I just loved all the old houses and buildings.  We walked up and down Market Street and King Street.  We took a horse drawn carriage tour that was so interesting.

 

There are several carriage tour companies and only so many can be in the downtown area at a given time.  Once we were ready, our tour guide went to a building to see which route we'd have.  There are three different ones and we got route 1, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  We went by the Charleston Water Park, Battery Park, down Rainbow Row, and by so many amazing houses with great history!  I don't remember it all, but it was very interesting.  We saw places where George Washington stayed, where others stayed that had signed the Constitution, where Generals stayed and saw the first canons of the war on Ft. Sumter and so on.  Here are some of my favorite places:

 

I love the shutters and flower boxes. 

This is one of the last cobblestone streets there

The next two are of Rainbow Row.  All the houses are painted in a different pastel color. My pictures don't do it justice.  These were all taken while in the moving carriage.

This mansion was given as a wedding gift from a father to his daughter back in 1875 or so.  It was $75,000, which was so much then.  Today it was recently sold for 5 million and then had 4 million dollars of work put into it. 

This is the Calhoun mansion.  This front door and entry way were in the movie, "The Notebook"

These next pictures are from the Waterfront Park.  The grounds were so beautiful.

 

This is the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.  It's 2 1/2 miles long and very popular for people to be walking or running over.  This picture was taken from the park.

We also shopped at the Charleston City Market.  It goes for blocks and blocks and has cute little shops. 

Everywhere we went these ladies were making Sweet Grass Baskets.  They were beautiful, but quite expensive.  One of the big bowls in the picture below was over $200.

 

It was just so much fun being downtown and seeing all Charleston had to offer.