I was excited about the weekend for two main reasons, the sun and the sea. The sun did indeed shine and sea does what it does best, look pretty.
On Saturday we went to the beach. There was six of there and nobody really knew anyone else and it is for this reason that I didn’t push my proposal that we should move further up the beach because the tide was coming in. I was sensible enough to move my bag further up the beach but not my towel, in accordance with the group’s decision not to move.
It’s hard to put an accurate time on it but approximately 90 seconds later, a wave, not a big wave, but a wave nonetheless came in and swamped us (well except for me because I had gone for a paddle seconds earlier). The girls got quite a shock. I really had to try hard not be smug because I had said we should move, that I had moved my bag and apart from my towel nothing got wet and oh yes, I had said to move!
The tide coming in put paid to our beach time and we went into downtown Charleston which is a beautiful old city. We didn’t take too much time to appreciate the history and went shopping at all the shops that I’m sure were there during the Civil War, like Gap.
In our defence there is a old open market that we went to. Charleston is famous for, among other things, selling wicker baskets which people make right infront of you at the market. They also apparently line them with gold, a tiny basket the size of your palm was about $100. Needless to say I didn’t buy one.
Saturday night we went out to the best seafood restaurant in Charleston, according to a tourist brochure in our apartment. The crowd of people outside proved to us that it had to be good, and we were expecting a wait. But we walked straight in which certainly bumped them up a few points in our book. I was scared about what to order, not being a big fish fan. The menu had all sorts of fish I didn’t even recognise, so I played safe and ordered ‘fish and chips’ which actually turned out to be potato wedges. Americans!
On Sunday we struggled to come up with a plan. It was one of those times that nobody would ever say what they actually thought. I put that down to nobody knowing each other, so there was a lot of ‘I don’t mind, what do you want to do?’ Added to the problem, on Saturday Maggie had claimed that her Mediterranean heritage, and not sunscreen, would somehow shield her from the sun’s damaging UV rays. She paid for it all weekend as she got b-u-r-n-t! But it meant on Sunday even though it was the obvious activity to do, the beach was out because Maggie didn’t want to be in the sun. Mediterranean my foot! So instead we came up with the idea, eventually, to go to the USS Yorktown which is moored there.
The USS Yorktown is a aircraft carrier from World War Two, so I loved it. All except for the fact that there was no air conditioning, hence the photo from last week. Seriously, we all sweated the whole way around which made me wonder how they ever fought the war without A/C! I suppose they had more important concerns.
It was all a bit Top Gun.
Or Under Seige.
So that was that, Charleston, South Carolina. A great weekend all in all, and not least because I saw the sea for the first time in months.
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