Lots of celebrities had eaten there and we sat at the same table as Anthony Hopkins and Michael Phelps. The food was great, we tried some fried green tomatoes and ordered a fish and seafood platter. The South really likes to fry their food!
After dinner we had a walk around Charleston past the mansion houses. I have to say that I was slightly disappointed with it. I have since chatted with a couple of friends who have recently both been to Savannah and then Charleston and they felt exactly the same, we think that after beautiful Savannah, Charleston is a bit of let down. There are some very lovely buildings in Charleston but I did prefer Savannah.
On Tuesday morning we visited Fort Sumter, this is where the civil war started in 1861. The only way to access the fort is by boat which takes takes about 30 minutes. I have to say that I was really disappointed by the whole place. I realise that it was attacked for 4 years so it is really badly damaged but Fort Pulaski was so much more interesting. We had an hour to wonder around before the boat returned to Charleston and after about 30 minutes we were done and just went back to wait on the boat. It was good timing as a few minutes later it started pouring with rain!
The rain stopped not long after our boat arrived back in Charleston so we decided to visit one of the mansion houses - Calhoun Mansion. The house is beautiful from the outside but the inside was yet another disappointment. The actual house is very nice but it is privately owned and the owner actually lives in the house and has very strange taste in decoration. The house is full of antiques but they are not in keeping with the era of the home at all, he has just filled it with anything that he likes and to me it just felt really wrong.
The thing that Charleston had in it's favour was the restaurants. We walked past loads of places that I liked the look of but quickly choose Jim 'N Nicks which we loved.
On Tuesday morning we visited Boone Hall Plantation. There are a few plantation houses near Charleston and I had been really interested in visiting Magnolia Plantation but after the other disappointments in Charleston I changed the plan and we decided to go to Boone Hall instead.
Boone Hall is famous for it's avenue of oak trees which were really beautiful but again the plantation house was a bit of a disappointment. The guided tour of the home which took us into 3 rooms! We also found out that this was not the original plantation house, this one was built in the 1930s, I've lived in older houses than that! It didn't impress me at all, Oak Alley Plantation that we visited in Louisiana was much more interesting.
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