Had a great sleep and awakened ready to see the sunrise from the Ravanel Bridge. We walked a bit to get to the beginning of the footpath. Found something that needs to be added to the Boar’s Head Winter Wander.
Also saw some birds on our morning walk.
We could see our boat from the bridge and recalled yesterday’s docking.
The bridge is an amazing structure built in 2005. They have a tribute to the old bridge on the middle span. There was a swing bridge here and they made a model of it out of the old steel from the bridge.
After breakfast, we took an uber to Calhoun Street and just wandered from there. We walked by the Fort Sumter museum. This was the place where the confederates fired the first shot of the civil war.
We saw a fountain dedicated to Septima Clark, an educator and civil rights activist . She is not someone I was familiar with but the quotes and tributes made me want to know more about her.
We saw the outside of the aquarium some plant exhibits there and some nice statues.
We then started walking and came upon the Charleston Museum. They claim to be the oldest museum in America. In the beginning, it housed the collections of the wealthy people of Charleston. One room is still dedicated to these; a large stuffed polar bear standing on rear legs, an Egyptian sarcophagus and some other oddities. The rest of the museum is dedicated to the history of the “lowcountry.” I felt they did an amazing job with the delicate history, giving all of the credit for the building of Charleston, the production of rice and indigo to those enslaved (mostly from West Africa). There were stories of individual slaves who helped shape the history of the civil war.
The museum also had a natural history section with fossils of ancient birds and a whale that was caught in the harbor and killed for the oil it could produce. Sad story for the whale.
After the museum, we looked at historic homes and Christmas decorations as we made our way down Calhoun street. We headed to the safe harbor marina where we were meeting our friends from the boat “What Up Fishes” to go to dinner. We passed an old borough that used to be an African American settlement. 1 1/2 of the homes still stand there.
Safe Harbor Charleston City was a really nice marina and we decided to move there tomorrow and made a reservation. We met our family of friends and made our way to King Street for dinner. It was great fun to be with them. We went to El Matador, a Mexican restaurant, after wandering upon a Christmas festival that had an amazing train set up. I took videos for Jer. A very fun active day in the city.
