Top 10 Seriously Cool Things About Charleston:
10. Outlying land/islands with tons of charm, character, and personality all their own. Whether it's hip, cool Folly Beach or beautiful Mt. Pleasant, there really was something for everyone. I wish I had had more time to give each of these precious places the attention they deserved.
9. Some of the freshest, best-tasting seafood I've ever eaten. I've been eating fresh Gulf seafood my entire life, but there was just something different about the crab, seafood, scallops, crawfish, etc. I ate in Charleston.
8. Eye candy. There was a surplus of incredibly attractive young men in the Charleston area, and many were out and about sans girlfriends or wedding rings, which is always a plus in my book these days. Plus, they were the kinds of Southern cuties I love to catch a glimpse of: khaki shorts, polo shirt, topsiders, and a great summer tan... yum.
7. Farmers markets and groceries that served food freshly picked/harvested from local still-working plantations. I have never had such wonderfully fresh vegetables and tasty homemade treats like you could find at these places all over Charleston. It didn't take long to get spoiled by that, and coming home to my local grocery store was a bit of rude awakening.
6. Tour guides who really know their stuff and make sure you have an incomparable experience. Whether it be on a walking or carriage tour, our guides were fantastic and made us feel like they really wanted us to know, understand, and love Charleston as much as they do.
5. Architecture that would seriously take your breath away... over and over and over again. This place is a photographer's (professional or, ahem, amateur) dream, and I just couldn't click away fast enough. I passed the same places over and over again and was
4. History books come to life in the coolest of ways. There's no drooling on your notebook or making paper airplanes during this history lesson, for it's just too interesting and too neat for that. The wit, enthusiasm, and passion with which the information was presented by everyone we encountered made boredom impossible and immediately sucked us into Charleston's past, present, and future.
3. My Kathleen Kelly moment. In the movie You've Got Mail (one of my all-time favorites), Kathleen Kelly [Meg Ryan] overhears someone in a bookstore ask a clerk the author of a certain book. The clerk doesn't know, but Kathleen does, so she speaks up and gives the customer the information she's looking for. I don't know why I think this is cool; call it a book lover's geeky fantasy, I guess. I had my very own Kathleen Kelly moment in the most amazing of bookstores in Charleston--Blue Bicycle Books. A girl was looking for the author of a somewhat obscure book I happen to have read, and I overheard her ask the girl working in the store if she knew the author. The clerk was looking it up on the computer, but I knew who it was. So, I offered the answer to the other customer, and I was, for that second, totally Kathleen Kelly. Sounds totally lame, right? I know. I thought it was so cool, though; I hope we can still be friends.
2. Windows into another time and another world: horse-drawn carriages; centuries-old graveyards; handwritten letters; tour guides in period costume (be it pirate or Revolutionary War); working plantations; and, churches unlike any seen today. I already feel like I'm born into the wrong generation most of the time (seeing as I would be more than happy to chuck my cell phone off a bridge and all), but this place made me truly long for a time when life moved at a slower pace and the world was a little cozier.
1. Streets where pirates, signers of the Declaration of Independence, soldiers in the Civil War, and the cast of The Notebook all walked. Talk about diversity, huh?
The trip was phenomenal, and I hope to get back to Charleston someday. I see now why everyone swoons when they talk about it; there's just something about that city. I can't describe it, but it's very, very cool.
And now I've said cool about seventy-four times.
