For our fifth anniversary, Laura and I visited Charleston, South Carolina. It is a neat city. It's good for walking, which is nice. Some pictures below help share the experience.

After arriving at the bed and breakfast, we set off on a walk around the neighborhood. We stayed at a place south of Broad, which is a neighborhood full of residences. The one in this picture is neat because of the peeling stucco. Laura likes that aged look.

Stucco is the most common treatment for the buildings there. Another common thing is for the side of the house to face the street. The front door of the house is most commonly on the side. Words like "front" and "side" kinda lose their meanings here. Anyway, the porches do not face the street. They face the neighboring house. I believe this is because the lots are narrow.

This house has ironwork along its fence placed there in case of a slave uprising.

Charleston has survived many calamities: fires, floods, earthquakes, and wars. The worst earthquake necessitated reinforcing rods to be placed in many of the buildings. You can see the ends protruding from the walls, marked by the black steel x's.

We walked up to the market, and while no pictures of that landmark are on here, I do have a couple of the rusty waterfront building nearby.

After this we kept on trekking through the city. A picture of some flowers before a porch:

And a cemetery that a) is overrun and b) closes at five.

We saw the famous Rainbow Row.

Charleston is known for its iron work.

Getting artsy with the photograph.

The next day we tried to go to Fort Sumter first thing. We boarded the boat amidst a hundred school kids. Sitting there waiting to embark, Laura realized we'd left the battery for the camera charging at the B&B. We asked to move our tickets to the afternoon boat and that was no problem so we went home and got the battery. Then we went to a plantation home: Drayton Hall.

Had to take a picture of the young gator in the reflection pond.

The aim of the administrators of the house is to keep it in its state as left by the owners, rather than restore it to what it probably looked like at first. This house was owned by the same family since its construction. Here's a pic of the interior.

That rug in the picture is to protect the hand-carved plaster ceiling below (we're on the second floor here). This exhibit satisfied one of Laura's two goals for the trip: seeing old things and seeing bullets in walls.

So, we made it to Ft. Sumter. We learned about the advancement in weaponry during the war of canons being "rifled and banded." This allowed greater range and accuracy. Here is a rifle shell or whatever embedded in the wall of the fort. This projectile flew over the yard and into the inside of an exterior wall (got that?). Thus Laura's trip was complete.

Here I am lending scale to one of the canon.

We closed out our trip with a walking tour.

Before we climbed it, Laura took a shot of the steepest hill in Charleston.

The whole city was in bloom. I should have put some flower pictures up here. This is a shot of some foliage on a tree we walked under.

Architecture we liked:

There was a lot of French stuff around, but this building is in some Italian style.

Charleston has lots of church steeples dotting its skyline.

Finally, this is one thing for which the city is well known: grass baskets. They are skillfully made by a method that's been passed down for generations.

Here are some ladies selling baskets on the steps of ... I think the post office, at the corner of Broad and Meeting streets.