Charleston, South Carolina

We spent the majority of yesterday visiting the Charleston, South Carolina area. It is about a 2-2.5 hour drive from Savannah, and is actually an older city than Savannah.

We had scheduled ourselves for a tour of the historical district, and the tour guide was extremely knowledgable.

• Probably one of the most unexpected things that we learned about Charleston is that they are built on top of an earthquake fault, which is fairly active. That was a bit of a rude surprise.
• We went to Southend Brewery for lunch, which was not too bad. They were pretty busy, as well as the entire downtown for that matter as a result of this:

These are the Blue Angels. Who we weren't aware were in town until we spoke to the tour guide to schedule the tour.  They were scheduled to be there all weekend, and their show on Saturday was scheduled for 2 PM, which was the same time as our tour.

The tour guide really worked around the fact that they were buzzing the majority of the downtown area we were touring. Some of the things we saw:

This particular house was built in the early 18th century, and is one of the oldest dwellings in town.

This building is home to one of the oldest theaters in the United States, and was the first theater built specifically for live performances in the colonies.

Savannah still has a reasonably large street in their downtown area which is entirely cobblestone. Apparently it's not particularly pleasant for anyone but the people who live on the street.

This is the city hall building in Charleston.












Overall, the tour was very interesting, and ended up showing us some unusual places in Charleston. They have alleys, which are named and are considered to be similar to street in spite of their inability to fit a car down them. There are also numerous historic houses and buildings, many of which have been there for more than 200 years. We also nearly jumped out of our skins when the Blue Angels buzzed the downtown with what felt like a sonic boom, but must have been slightly lower than Mach due to the potential to break windows with the sound.

You could also see Fort Sumter, one of the starting sites of the Civil War, out on the islands in the distance from the coast in Charleston. It was a bit surprising that the Blue Angels show only lasted for about an hour, but they were definitely busy during that time. All in all a very fun day in town.

Weekend Thoughts for 4/10/10

Baseball season is about to complete its' first full week, and already I've seen a fair amount of it. Mostly on tv of course, but we have already attended a local game.

• Here in Savannah are the Single-A affiliate of the New York Mets, the Savannah Sand Gnats. Their opening night was on Thursday, which we went to. The stadium is a much older park, probably built sometime in the 40s or 50s if I were to guess. 
• The Sand Gnats won the game, although we left during a rain delay. We had known that there was a likelihood of rain, as there was a massive thunderstorm front that would be coming through the area sometime in the late evening.
• The rain was not a huge deal, as nearly the entire seating area has a full roof covering it, and we had chosen an excellent location to sit.
• The weather here, with the exception of that set of storms on Thursday night, has been clear and nice, with temps in the high 70s and low 80s pretty much every day.
• We made a trip out yesterday to the Strawberry Festival out at Ottawa Farms in nearby Bloomingdale. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite the entertainment we thought it would be. Shortly after we got there, the transformer powering nearly everything blew out, and the one thing we had really been looking forward to (strawberry ice cream) could not be dispensed unfortunately, since the machine had no power to give ice cream. 
• You could hear in the background the Civil War re-enacters, but they didn't really appear to have a set schedule as to when they were going to be doing things, so we didn't really see any of them.

We are also looking for older photos of the Savannah area for a project we're thinking of trying out. If you know where we can get some photos that are public domain, please let us know!

Weekend Thoughts for 4/3/10

Not a whole lot has been going on around here, but there's always something to write about...

• Congrats to Dale and Sara. We went to their wedding last night out on Tybee Island, and had the most amazing meal afterward. 
• The weather out here has been extremely nice for the past week. Unseasonably warm they say, but I will take temps in the 80's every day.
• I have been tinkering with some new recipes, and found a really great recipe for calzones. So wonderful.
• We went over to Beaufort, South Carolina today. It's a little over an hour away from Savannah, and is a decent size town. Out at the edge of the city is Hunting Island, which is home to a state park with a very nice beach. 
• Nearly all of the beaches here have been very busy over the last week because of the nice weather, and the added free time of all the Savannah students on Spring Break. To the point of causing massive traffic coming back off of Tybee Island.
• Our home theater system that we received as a wedding gift has the ability to stream Netflix directly over the internet. It is a WONDERFUL feature. Well worth the monthly cost of Netflix at this point to use it for as much programming as is available.
• Baseball season starts officially on Sunday, and it feels like it has been a long time coming at this point. Go A's!