Charleston was just voted the top tourist destination in the world by readers of Condé Nast magazine. I don’t know anything about Condé Nast magazine, but Charleston is an awfully nice place to visit.

We arrived October 12th and left the 16th. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking…

Charleston, South Carolina (12-Oct-2012 – 16-Oct-2012)

By the time we got registered at the “Harborage at Ashley Marina“, tidied up the boat, and took showers, it was late in the afternoon, so we didn’t get too many pictures the first night.

It was supposed to be quite windy during our stay, and having anchored and dragged in Charleston Harbor once before (many years ago), we decided we’d spring for a marina. Seeing what happened to a few boats in the anchorage as we made our way to the marina sealed the deal.

It was about a ten minute double-ride from the marina to downtown, and very scenic most of the way.

Some say that Charleston is nicknamed “The Holy City” because of the number of churches, whose spires are visible for blocks in the low-rise cityscape. Not sure, but took lots of pictures of St. Philip’s :).

We stopped at a couple of happy hours, took a few pictures, then our new internal “cruising curfew” kicked in, and we were home and asleep by about ten o’clock.

The next day, we biked to the visitors centre, and decided to do a tour of a couple of the city’s historical houses.

The tour said that the Aiken-Rhett house “…stands alone as the most intact mansion with associated outbuildings showcasing urban life in antebellum Charleston.” It also required about 18 slaves to keep the place running during its heyday.

The Nathaniel Russell House is described as one of America’s most important Federal period townhouses.

After the tours we went for lunch, and biked around some more. Even alleyways and your average residential garden were beautiful to look at. Unfortunately, most of the pictures turned out too dark to share.

On our way back to the boat (where we intended to just freshen up to go back out again), we stopped at Dave’s Take-Out for a snack. If you like fried seafood, he has the cheapest/tastiest in town (so we learned from Yelp). We brought the take-out snack back to the boat, ate it in the cockpit as we watched the sun go down, then went for a quick nap. After ignoring the stupid thirty minute alarm we set, we woke up the next day.

Well rested, we biked along The Battery the next day, and took in some more gardens and parks.

I won’t rehash all we learned about American history during our stop in Charleston. To start would turn this into another 2000 word post, so I’ll just keep the pictures coming.

We caught some live music at a few of the stops we made, which we were hoping to do during our stay. On our way back to the boat (again, it was early), we happened upon a bike polo match. It was pretty fun to watch.

Snoring again before 10pm; I don’t know what’s happened to us.

We hadn’t planned to stay a fourth night, but the forecast said there was going to be “thunderstorms with damaging winds” in the area we were going to be traveling, so we stayed, and it was laundry, groceries, and take-advantage-of-the-marina-facilities day.

We left the 16th, and anchored that night in a very remote little creek off the Coosaw River. About two hours before we got there, we got stuck in the Ashepoo-Cooshaw Cutout between R184 and G185 (came to a nice, easy, slow-motion, mud-plowing stop). This was not unexpected, as we were passing through at low tide. We just waited for the water to come back, and got going again.

We got up early this morning and stopped in Beaufort (Bew-fert), South Carolina, for a quick tour and some lunch, but I’ll save that for another post.

We’re going to anchor in another creek tonight (we’ll know which one when we get there), and will be in Savannah, GA tomorrow sometime.