Before driving back to Charlotte we made a stop at Boone Hall Plantation. The drive up had the mile-long row of big, hundred-year-old oak trees just like you expect on a typical plantation in the deep-south. We toured the main house which was very nice and interesting but we were a bit disappointed to find out that although the plantation was over 300 years old, the house was actually built around 1930. After the tour we watched a little play and then walked over to the slave cabins. One of the cabins featured an excellent presentation on Gullah culture. At the end, the woman giving the presentation asked the audience for volunteers for a song called "Ranky Tanky". Patty thought it would be funny to point towards me but the woman said that she always picks the person who does the pointing rather than the person they're pointing to so Patty got dragged up on stage instead.

[Note: This blog entry was post-dated after we returned]

Labels: Charleston, family, Maegan, Patty, vacation

Today was our only full day in Charleston. Almost everything is closed on a Sunday morning in "The Holy City" but luckily we were able to take an early guided tour of the city. We got to see all the historic houses and sites like The Battery, Rainbow Row and more. Kudos to an excellent tour guide at Gray Line Tours.

After lunch we headed to the South Carolina Aquarium. We tried to take Maegan to the aquarium in Charleston a few years ago but were surprised to find a three hour line to get in due to the fact that tickets were only $1 for Community Appreciation Day, an event they failed to publicize ahead of time on their website. After a three and a half hour trip to Charleston we had to turn around and head back home empty handed. This time I called ahead of time to double check that the same thing wasn't going to happen again. The staff told me that although there was a festival that day in the adjacent park, there would be no special discounts that would create a similar situation to the experience we had a few years ago. We got to the aquarium at exactly 2:00pm and got on a line of about 40 people. We then discovered that starting at exactly 2:00pm they were offering tickets to the aquarium for just $1. The aquarium staff totally lied to me! By the time we got to the beginning of the line 10 minutes later, the line was several hundred people long, stretching all the way down the street in a de ja vu of our last attempt to go to the aquarium, but we got lucky by getting there just at the perfect moment to save us from paying an extra $70. Long story short, the aquarium was very nice.

Later that evening we met up with some relatives of mine who live in Charleston. My second cousin, Norman, is a professor at the College of Charleston. Being only three and a half hours away from Charlotte makes him my closest relative (geographically), however I don't think we've ever met before. We had a nice dinner on the waterfront in nearby Mount Pleasant. Norman, my mother, my sister, and I discussed family connections and genealogy research. Maegan spent half of dinner trading making-faces with her one of her new cousins. Until this weekend Maegan only knew of one cousin on my side of the family but she now knows three more. I enjoyed meeting family I didn't know I had and we plan on getting together again in the future.

[Note: This blog entry was post-dated after we returned]

Labels: Charleston, family, Maegan, Patty, vacation

We left early this morning for a mini-vacation to Charleston, South Carolina, a city with well over 300 years of history. My mother flew in from New York City and my sister flew in from Washington, D.C. to join us.

Our first stop was Fort Sumter, sight of the first shots of the Civil War in 1861. We took a ferry over to the island fortress. It was very interesting and although the fort isn't very large, I wish they gave us more than an hour to look around. After the tour we checked in to our hotel and walked just a couple of blocks to Market Street in the historic district.

[Note: This blog entry was post-dated after we returned]

Labels: Charleston, family, Maegan, Patty, vacation

Last Friday was Patty and my fifth anniversary. We went to Morton's for dinner. Incredible service and atmosphere, but we were disappointed by the steaks. They were good, but we expected much better.

Then on Saturday we went to Charleston for the first time with Maegan to see the Aquarium. It happened to be community appreciation day and tickets were only $1, which made all the locals come out and we couldn't get in because of the three hour line that went around the block just to buy tickets. That trip sucked big time, but we'll try to visit again on a more normal day.

Labels: Charleston, Patty