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Last Updated: 11/19/2020
One Day in Charleston? Challenge accepted!
Even before we arrived, we knew we’d want more than one day in Charleston, SC. But with a tight timetable on our April 2019 Coastal Carolinas Road Trip, which includes stops in the Outer Banks and Virginia, we didn’t have much choice. From sun up to well past sunset, we filled our single day in Charleston with the very best this historic city offers.
If you’re wondering how many Charleston highlights you can cram in one day, I’m here to tell you, yes, you can take a carriage ride, see Fort Sumter, and all the historic downtown highlights. Why not throw in a ghost tour while you’re at it too? Charleston can feel quite similar to Savannah, GA, but as you’ll see from this one-day Charleston itinerary, it has a charm all its own.
Here’s what we got up to during our too brief visit to Charleston.
Historic Charleston City Market
Our first order of business for our one day in Charleston was to hop on a horse tour of the historic downtown residential section. If you’ve spent any time researching things to do in Charleston, you know that horse carriage tour is an extremely popular way to acquaint yourself with the city.
We’d booked our tour the night before and arrived downtown with time to spare. Since we’d be dropped off right next to the Historic Charleston City Market, we decided to stroll through.
What’s with all the sweetgrass baskets you see in the Charleston City Market?
Other than its pretty setting, the Charleston City Marketplace is not particularly unique. It definitely caters to the tourist crowd, offering coffee, souvenirs, tea towels with kitschy sayings, sun hats, and the like. One thing you will notice are a lot of vendors selling sweetgrass baskets both in the market and on surrounding streets.
As we paused to admire the intricate, symmetrical patterns at a sweetgrass basket booth in the market, the artist approached us and asked if we would listen to her story. After retiring from a medical job, she was now spending her days making baskets so people like her granddaughter and us would understand the history of both the baskets and of African American people in South Carolina.
When slaves from West Africa were brought to South Carolina some 300 years ago, they brought over a tradition of basket weaving. They used those skills to weave sweetgrass into baskets for separating out chaff during the rice harvest. The baskets are one of the oldest forms of African American art with each older generation passing their basketry skills down to the next – usually from mother to daughter.
Another Charleston Souvenir Of Not: Palmetto Roses
One Charleston souvenir that dovetails in with the sweetgrass baskets (and is much more affordable) that you’ll see a lot of in market area are Palmetto Roses. These pretty little flowers woven from palmetto fronds supposedly date back to the Civil War.
In recent years, the roses have been a source of controversy and discord around the City Market. Palmetto rose vendors gained popularity in the early 2000s, to the point where the city created a program to license youth palmetto rose vendors who are almost always African American. However, unlicensed vendors continued selling and in 2018, the city of Charleston arrested two unlicensed teenagers.
If you do decide to buy a palmetto rose, you may or may not be getting a piece of Charleston’s Civil War history, but you’re definitely get a piece of modern race relations!
Charleston Horse Carriage Tours
Apparently we had a nose for controversy, because our next stop was the Palmetto Carriage Works (8 Guignard St), one of several horse tour companies operating in the Anson/Guignard St. area just north of the City Market. Many people consider a Charleston horse carriage tour the best ways to see the historic residential section of downtown Charleston. This area extends from the market area down to Charleston’s southern point.
We opted for Palmetto Carriage Works simply because they seemed to have the best (and most) ratings. Apparently, they are also the oldest horse tour operator in the city.
The Charleston Horse Carriage Tour Controversy
Any money-making venture with animals is bound to attract some vocal opposition. We saw a few protest signs along our carriage route. Of course, our guide started the tour by pointing out the horses’ cooling stations and explaining each horse’s mandatory rest time between tours.
I’d like to believe the tour companies, especially since it seems advantageous to them for the horses to live long, healthy lives, but there’s no denying that horse tours during Charleston’s notorious hot, steamy afternoons would take their toll on any animal.
In 2017, the Charleston City Council began prohibiting horse tours when temperatures rise above 95 degrees and it is recommended to take your tour in the morning before the sun is totally beating down on you, your guide, and the horses. Our tour started rolling at 11 and we were definitely a little toasty in the noonday sun by the end.
Charleston Horse Carriage Tour Protocol
To keep the horse tours evenly dispersed through the residential district, the city of Charleston has divided the area into four sections and requires each tour to check in at a booth before starting their tour. At the booth the tour guide pulls a bingo ball (yes, really!) to determine which one of the four sections they will go into.
We happened to draw the section which includes the famed Rainbow Row houses on Elliott Street. (Lucky us!) As we passed by the waterfront, we learned a little bit about P.T.G. Beauregard and the start of the Civil War. We then looped back towards the market area while our guide shared some interesting facts about the houses and streets we passed.
It’s important to note that each horse tour you take in Charleston will be slightly different. Not only does the whole bingo ball tour route situation shake up tours, but the tours also aren’t scripted. The experience you have is directed by the guide and any questions the group asks.
Tommy Condon’s Restaurant/Irish Pub
By the time our horse tour wrapped up, the sun hung high in sky which we too as a sign to head over to Tommy Condon’s Restaurant/Irish Pub (160 Church St.) for lunch. We’d passed it towards the end of our horse tour and none of us are one to say no to an Irish pub. We opted to sit on their outside patio which for these three Minnesotans felt like a huge treat in April. No complaints about lunch either!
After lunch, we had some time to kill before we caught the 2:30 ferry to Fort Sumter. We popped into a few shops around the market, including a t-shirt shop where we got an excellent recommendation for dinner. My secret plan was to wonder up the main shopping boulevard and just happen upon Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream, but we never made it that far.
Ferry to Fort Sumter
By the time we reached the ferry terminal for Fort Sumter, the sun that had felt so amazing just a few short hours ago was in full blaze mode. After an hour walking in the hot sun, we were all a little frazzled. We bought some water in the ferry terminal gift shop and had pretty well collected ourselves by the time we got on the ferry boat.
It’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating: There is not much to see at Fort Sumter. If you’re looking for a better Civil War site in the South, I recommend Fort McAllister outside of Savannah, GA.
As interesting as the place where Civil War began sounds, once you reach the small island, there’s not much to do. The park rangers give an approximately ten-minute presentation about the events of April 11/12, 1861. After that, you’re turned loose to wander around the cannons and damaged walls of Fort Sumter until the next ferry boat comes in.
With a only small gift shop and display of museum exhibits on the island, the National Park Service certainly seems aware that there’s not a whole lot to keep people engaged. The NPS definitely panders to short attention spans because the ferries turn around fairly quickly. While we all enjoyed our time at Fort Sumter, no one was sad when it was time to get back on the ferry.
Is it worth it to go to Fort Sumter?
After that glowing review of Fort Sumter, you might be considering skipping the island during your time in Charleston. I actually think that would be a huge mistake. The ferry ride itself really makes the Fort Sumter experience worth it. You get a great view of the bridge, you’ll see dolphins, and you’ll gaze upon all the fancy houses on Sullivan Island. The whole experience is only going to take a little over two hours of your time.
Rainbow Row and Pineapple Fountain
We grabbed a quick Lyft from the ferry terminal back down to some sites we’d passed on the horse tour. Namely we wanted to revisit Rainbow Row and the Pineapple Fountain at the Waterfront Park and get some better photos than we could grab from a moving horse carriage.
If you want good pictures of Rainbow Row, it’s recommended you go in the early morning. Sad trombone, we arrived at mid/late afternoon. There were truly people all over the place and at least one very obvious photo shoot going on. Not surprisingly, the best photos I took captured houses on the surrounding streets, not Rainbow Row.
Happy Hour at the Rooftop Bar at the Vendue
By this point, we were pretty thirsty and it was time for happy hour.
The Gin Joint came highly to me for just this purpose, but since only one of us likes gin (that would be me) and The Gin Joint (as one might expect) only serves gin and rye, we opted for the larger drink menu of the nearby Rooftop Bar at the Vendue (19 Vendue Range). (Like its southern neighbor, Savannah, rooftop bars are pretty common in downtown Charleston.)
I feel obligated to order Pimm’s whenever it’s on a menu, so naturally, I ordered the first thing on the menu – a Pimm’s Cup. It did not disappoint. The rooftop felt surprisingly busy, but we easily grabbed a table at the edge of the rooftop patio and enjoyed put our feet up for a little bit in the bar’s relaxed atmosphere.
Fleet Landing Restaurant and Bar
After our libations, we headed just up the road to Fleet Landing Restaurant and Bar (186 Concord St). The lady at the t-shirt shop sent us to this restaurant located on a pier jutting into the Charleston Harbor for the best shrimp and grits in Charleston.
Both Jenny and Leah very much enjoyed the shrimp and grits, they ordered. However, my mahi mahi clearly won dinner. The waitress recommended blackening the fish and adding lemon dill shallot butter. With sides of grits and green beans, it was basically transcendental.
We also ordered oysters on the half shell for an appetizer. Since Jenny and I had never had oysters like this before, Leah kindly walked us through the eating technique. While maybe not my favorite food in the whole wide world, I enjoyed the little “kiss of the sea.”
Despite a slightly commercial atmosphere (i.e. they give you light-up pagers as you wait for your table), you can’t beat Fleet Landing’s food.
Bulldog Tours Ghost and Graveyard Tour
Our bellies full, we headed over to the Bulldog Tours headquarters (18 Anson St.) to round out the day with Ghost and Graveyard Tour. In a North American city as old as Charleston, we knew this was the place to do a ghost tour.
I’m no a ghost believer, but I love a good ghost story and happily our tour guide Stu proved a very good storyteller. Like with most walking tours, we only walked a little over a mile in about an hour and a half. Since our mileage for the day was already in the double digits at the start of the walking tour you didn’t hear any complaints from us!
From Bulldog Tours headquarters in a Victorian style house, we headed down towards two of Charleston’s iconic churches: St. Philip’s Church and the Circular Congregational Church. The sun sinking below the horizon just as we started wandering through the graveyard lent a nice spooky effect and Stu assured us ghosts were near. However, all our photos sadly lacked the orbs or other telltale signs of supernatural activities.
From the churches, we headed over to the Charleston County Probate Court for a longer story. We continued on to Philadelphia Alley, which runs behind St. Philip’s Church. Also known as Dueler’s Alley, our tour ended there.
I don’t think anyone walked away from the tour any more or less convinced about ghosts’ existence, but we enjoyed ourselves. If you have time for both horse and walking tours of Charleston, I recommend both since they will give you a richer sense of the city’s history.
Things We Didn’t Do (Because we ran out of time)
Charleston offers so much that we ended our day will a long list of things to do that we just didn’t get to. Several people we spoke with during the day highly recommended The Old Slave Mart Museum (6 Chalmers St). I never say “no” to touring old houses and would have loved to tour one of the old historic homes in the residential section. We barely scratched the surface of Charleston’s amazing food scene too . . . .
As they say, there’s always next time!
Other Fun Charleston Activity Ideas!
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