Day 2 Charleston (Sept 26)

So today was plantation day. We had planned on visiting 3 plantations that were within miles of each other. We started at Drayton Hall.

This was owned by a wealthy family, surprising. And it looks beautiful...on the outside. On the inside, there have never updated it to include running water or electricity. Imagine, no breeze on a hot summer day in Charleston...sheesh...that'd suck. Suddenly fans that women carried made sense.

But here the kicker, not a stitch of furniture on the inside. Just empty rooms. The furniture was being restored and would eventually be put back...or replicas of it. A tour of an inside of a mansion without furniture is B-O-R-I-N-G. Really not very interesting at all. While the moldings and what not were pretty, it certainly wasn't work the $$ we paid for it.

So off to the next one, Magnolia Hall. That one turned out to be about the same price, and had a tram ride...but it was mostly gardens and to see the house you had to pay extra. We opted out.

The last one on our list, Middleton Place, was written up as the oldest and finest in the area. It sure as hell should have been for the price they were asking to get into it. Let's just say we opted out of that one too.

The most exciting part about any of them was driving into one of the long driveways and seeing a HOARD of Turkey Buzzards attacking road kill.  Turns out turkey buzzards are ugly birds.

Enough of the wildlife and boring, expensive houses, we headed in to Sommerville for lunch. We had been told from one of our waitresses that Sticky Fingers was a great place for BBQ. Its a chain, but we figured why not try it.

OH....MY....GOODNESS was it delicious. Some of the best BBQ I've had. And we did, in fact, have sticky fingers. The interesting thing here was the corn on the cob...every had deep fried corn on the cob? Yah me neither...and oh my was it good.

On our was back to Charleston, the skies opened up and it rained, hard, for a good 3 hours. We couldn't get out of the car to see anything because the rain was pounding. So we drove around, dropped the window quickly, and shot a photo as quickly as possible so we didn't get wet. I do like my torrential downpours, but this was really a lot of water.

After swearing we'd never eat again after lunch, we decided to go grab dinner. Our first stop was Jestine's and it was closed. Here's the thing, we've ran into I don't know how many issues with restaurants we want to eat at being closed.  It's like we're cursed.

So instead we drove to the market and decided to eat at the Crab House. And considering we had our crab hats, it just made sense. Only...I forgot my hat back at the room. So the MomUnit and SIL wore there's and boy did they get the looks. Funny enough, we didn't order crab. Not a single one of us.\\

Tomorrow we'll get up early and go to Fort Somter. Really hoping it doesn't rain like it did today. If I buy a poncho I can almost guarantee it won't rain.

Here are some other shots from today:

African American Burial ground on Drayton Hall land. "Leave em rest"

Entrance to the African American burial ground

Wrought iron is everywhere here.

We found a graveyard!!

Grand Staircase in Drayton Hall

The Privy at Drayton Hall. It has a fireplace!

Drayton Hall version of running water.

The driveway...