Spent about five hours on Thursday just walking around Charleston. I downloaded a walking tour guide and, from what I overheard of the other tour guides passing me, I think the downloaded one was at least as good. Less self-important anyway. Here are some photos, shown gallery-style because it’s so much easier to do that way and I didn’t have snarky comments about these anyway:

It’s a nice town. I now know more about Charleston than any other city in the world, I think. Or at least I did on Thursday. “Genteel poverty” seems like a cool term — I think I might like to have seen that era. The spikes on the top of the wall were put there in case of slave revolt. I can’t really see those spikes helping too much, though. Didn’t those people know they needed barbed wire and glass shards up there instead?

Also, I still felt too burned by Biltmore to spend $x on any of the mansions-for-viewing on my route. There were probably 15 or 20 of the 100 tour entries that had an entry fee if you wanted to go inside.

Yep.

bkd

I guess it’s never a bad thing to go hang out on an aircraft carrier-museum for a few hours. Well — probably the second consecutive day of it might get old. Never done it that way, though, so I wouldn’t know.

I’m starting to realize that Charleston’s attractions are merely okay. OTOH, it’s been a great, comfortable, *polite* place to hole up for a few days.

That said, here are a few pictures of the same thing each time. (The aircraft carrier is the Yorktown, it was built in 1943 and therefore involved in WWII. Decommissioned in 1970. It smelled like an aircraft carrier.)

Oh, and I forgot to re-charge my DSLR battery, so these were taken with my cell phone, so they’re kind of crappy-looking.

Carrier, flag, Ravenel Bridge (connects Charleston with Mt. Pleasant)

Tailhook, but no scandal.

Hornet is go.

Bridge and Phantom viewed from flight control.

Y’know, I’m not sure I learned anything from this ship. The guy there didn’t know if there were any actual F4F Wildcats left anywhere (theirs was another FM-2). Um. They have a Medal of Honor museum on-board, but it was pretty dull. You do (re-)learn that aircraft carriers are big, complex systems there. Got to see the on-board dentist area. There’s also a submarine that you can walk through (torpedo room, engine room, officers’ rooms, bridge, galley, mess, torpedo room — IIRC).

Beautiful day, though.

bkd

(PS, I *did* learn that Charleston lost their navy base in, like, ’98 or so. Still got the AFB, though.)