We entered the breakwater into the huge Charleston Harbor from the Atlantic Ocean and docked in the centre of the beautiful old town. Now that we are back in USA we no longer have the military escort into the docks.
The town was founded in 1670 and originally known as Charles Towne to honour King Charles of England. Originally founded by the English who then decided it was too swampy and mosquito ridden to be a worthwhile settlement. When the French decided to settle here, the English quickly changed their mind and the city was established by English, French and West Africans.
The population today is about 700,000 residents and the city is situated directly on the earthquake fault line of the east coast. Many of the houses show evidence of past earthquakes with part of their brick structure bulging and most houses now have steel rods inserted from one side to another for support. The rod ends have decorated caps on the outside of the house, attempting to hide and individualise each house.
This is Gone with the Wind country and the houses are beautiful Georgian style.
We went on a horse and carriage ride through the city- Charleston's version of the hop on hop off bus. We clippity clopped through the old streets between the beautiful old houses, sharing the road with the local traffic through the traffic lights and moving to the side of the road to let cars pass when space allowed. At one point the animals decided to urinate in unison while they were waiting for the traffic lights to change, which was very noisy and caused a rush of pedestrians to scurry out of the way. To comply with strict environmental control the driver produced a pink plastic marker from her pocket and dropped it onto the road to indicate to local council workers the deposit just left. They then quickly sponge up and wash down the road to ensure minimum damage to their harbour.
David and Ken thn took a local bus ride to see the seamier sixe of town, while Anne and I checked out the markets, meeting back in an Irish pub for a drink before reboarding the ship. There has usually been an Irish pub in our ports.
During the afternoon the dolphins came to our side of the ship to show off their babies and put on a diving display for us, disappearing under our stationary vessel only to reappear and float on their back as if asking for a belly rub.
Birds love flying with the ship using the air currents and on our departure from Charleston we were accompanied by about 30 pelicans giving us an aerobatic display. The pelicans in this part of the world are grey and small and not as nearly as nice as our home grown black and white pelicans with huge beaks.
We were impressed with Charleston and it's gracefull homes and beautiful harbour.
The next day will be a sailing day without a stop and our next port is New York. We have a sleepover on board in NY when we dock and the next day we disembark.
We are looking forward to a week in NY but will miss our lovely home on the sea. We have thoroughly enjoyed our trip and met some really nice people. We are impressed with the size of this ship, being smaller than others we have been on and are blown away by the level of service by the staff. Wish I could take some of them home.
NY here we come..we arrive am so hope to have some amazing photos.
Pam
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