Charlestowne Landing and a Carriage Tour: the last Charleston Post!

Travel dates: April 1-8, 2017

Well, I meant to get all the Charleston posts finished before we left for our big summer trip, but sometimes getting ready for one’s next trip gets in the way of blogging about one’s last trip. But here I am with one last post about stuff we did on our Charleston spring break trip. And it’s good stuff!

Carriage Tour with Palmetto Carriage Works: Palmetto Carriage WorksThere are a number of different tours that offer carriage tours in Charleston, and it’s entirely possible that I chose for ours because the tours start at a really pretty red barn:

But, at any rate, it was a good choice. Our tour guide was knowledgable and entertaining, our mules were handsome and strong, and we saw lots of great stuff.

Prices for the tours are $26 for adults and $16 for kids, making it a not inexpensive day out. But it’s a fun thing to splurge on and a great way to see the city. You can book a tour online, which is probably a good idea, because when we turned out to buy tickets on site, we had to wait about an hour and a half for the next available tour. We passed the time going to see the City Market, because all the guidebooks say that’s what you’re supposed to do. Eh. We’re not big shoppers.

But we ARE big ice cream eaters, so we set off in search of a nearby ice cream shop and learned that it happened to be free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s! Score!

And then it was time for our tour. Carriage tours in Charleston are really carefully regulated; there are three approved routes, and each tour that goes out waits in line and gets assigned to one of the routes via a lottery system, so there’s no way of knowing in advance exactly what you’re going to see.

I’m pretty much willing to bet they all go by a bunch of old houses, though. Ours went down by the waterfront:

Charlestowne Landing:

I’m always up for some living history type stuff, so when I read about Charles Towne Landing, the site of the early European settlement outside of Charleston, I put it on the list immediately. I was impressed by how much there is to do here. There’s the recreation of the original settlement, of course (this was when both my camera and my phone tragically died at the same time, so I mostly just have a few photos from Dave’s phone of this part of the site):

But there’s also an extensive museum detailing all the history of the early colonists:

And even a small zoo with wildlife native to the area:

Abe and Ari did a show here:

We brought our bikes here because I’d read there are bike paths all over the property, and this turned out to be a great decision. Since it’s Charleston, it was all easy, level riding, and the trails wound through the gardens and forest and made for a truly lovely ride. And it made seeing the whole place much easier to accomplish, too.

Charles Towne Landing is a state historic site, run by the SC state park department; we’ve had very good experiences with state parks in SC. Admission is $10 for adults, $6 for kids up to 16, and free for ages 5 and under.

And with that I’ll say goodbye to Charleston and turn my blogging attention fully to this massive trip we’re on. Sitting at our campsite in beautiful Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota right now! You can read the first weekly update here and you can read about our Nashville visit to Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage on my other blog; I should be back with another update in the next couple of days.

Thanks to the Charleston Convention and Visitor’s Bureau for working with me on this trip. I received free or discounted admission to some sites, but was not otherwise compensated and all opinions are my own.