On Monday, we got up to the alarm at 6.00 am, got ready hurriedly and rushed downstairs to the basement to have breakfast. After breakfast, we manoeuvred our new suitcases down five floors to check out of the hostel, then along the street, down to the Metro station and on to a train. We had to change to another train at 59th Street through Queens and then on to the Air Train to JFK Airport.
It was a very short flight to Washington Dulles Airport with the excellent budget carrier Jetblue (half the price of the Delta shuttle). At the airport, we went to the Alamo depot to see what cars had a boot large enough for our two outsized roller cases. To our horror, the only car that was suitable was an enormous Impala LT! We told ourselves it might be a good idea as it was probably safer in the winter conditions that we were unused to driving in. Back at the terminal we caught a couple of Metro buses to downtown Washington. As we drove along, we could see snow piled up in the gutters and in the garden beds. It felt much cooler here and there were none of the New York skyscrapers and high-rise buildings. We were dropped off a couple of blocks away from our hotel and after checking into our lovely room we wandered into the cold to find an overdue lunch. Our room was such a contrast to our accommodation in New York. For less money we got a room three times the size, with its own bathroom, kitchen facilities, a safe, two TVs and a sitting room.
After lunch at a sandwich chain called Cosi we walked to the White House a few blocks away. We enjoyed the views of the White House and the surrounding monuments in the sunset and walked back to the hotel where we spent a happy evening with a takeaway dinner and a glass of wine in front of the TV with 42 channels to choose from!
After a lovely sleep in our outsize comfortable bed, we woke up on Tuesday morning and had breakfast in our room before heading out for the day. We caught a metro to Union Station where we talked to Alamo to see if they could do us a good deal on a rental car. To our disappointment, the lady behind the counter insisted that the online rate was a good rate and that we would not be able to do better than that. We had a quick look at the holiday market stalls in Union Station and then walked to the nearby National Mall.
The National Mall was a two mile long green stretch of parkland between the United States Capitol Hill and the Lincoln Memorial with the Washington monument in between. We started off at the Capitol building and then zigzagged between a couple of grand avenues flanked by trees, gardens and ponds (which were frozen and hard enough for us to stand on) lined with beautiful white neo-classical monuments and museums.
We paid a lightning visit to the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. With the help of a brochure from the Information Desk, we were able to concentrate on twelve of the museums highlights including the only da Vinci in the Western Hemisphere, some Dutch masters, a Turner and a Whistler.
We walked into Chinatown and ended up having lunch at Fuddruckers. After lunch we walked through some more holiday markets back to the National Mall. We walked to the obelisk-like Washington Monument and then across some green lawns and past a long rectangular pool to the Lincoln Memorial where a large statue of Lincoln was seated presiding over the mall.
It was cold and dark by this time so we headed back to the hotel.
After breakfast on Wednesday, we went down to the hotel's business centre to book our rental car and print our booking confirmation.
Then we caught a metro to Arlington National Cemetery where over 320,000 servicemen and their family members are buried. The green slopes overlooking the Potomac River and the Lincoln Memorial were marked with row upon row of marble and granite headstones. At Arlington National Cemetery, our first stop was the Kennedy gravesite where John F Kennedy was buried with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and two of their children who had died in infancy. At the head of the graves an eternal flame burned from the centre of flat circular granite stone. Nearby were the more modest graves of Robert F Kennedy and Charles E Kennedy. We walked to Arlington House which was once the home of Confederate General Robert E Lee. The house was undergoing renovations so all of the furniture was in storage, but there was an interesting display with information about Robert E Lee's family and the American Civil War. Then we walked to the marble Memorial Amphitheatre behind which the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier rested. In front of the tomb maintaining a constant vigil, was a very smartly dressed sentinel. The sentinel paced 21 steps down the mat in front of the tomb, paused for 21 seconds and then returned. We were lucky enough to be there at the changing of the guard which also involved a presentation of arms. We walked around the cemetery trying to find a way out close to the Pentagon building which we could clearly see across a freeway. We couldn't find another exit so we had to walk back around the perimeter wall adorned with plaques of recently deceased people.
We exited the cemetery and caught a metro into town for a late lunch. Then we walked a couple of blocks and popped into the Museum of Natural History where we saw a full size elephant in the rotunda, the Hope diamond and a lot of other extraordinary gems and meteors, displays of animal skeletons ranging from echidna, platypus, anteater, and sloth to whale before they kicked us out at 5.30 pm.
On Thursday, we woke up to the alarm at 7.00 am, had breakfast, finished packing and then checked out of the hotel. We made our way to the Dupont Circle metro station where we caught a train to Union Square. At Union Square we went to the Alamo rental desk where we finalised the paperwork for our car and made our way to the garage to collect our car. Luckily they had an Impala LT in stock for us so that we could fit our monster suitcases into the boot. We were really pleased because it turned out to be a really comfortable car and we had a lot of driving to do over the next seven weeks.
We drove south out of Washington DC. It was much easier than we thought it would be thanks to some very clear road signs and the help of our new Garmin GPS unit. We drove out of District of Columbia and stopped at a pretty riverfront town called Occoquan just before we left Virginia. We admired the bridge with geese in the river and snow on the banks and retreated from the cold back to the car. We drove south on the Interstate Highway 95 and stopped at Millie's diner in Richmond for a delicious lunch of grilled mahi mahi with avocado, rice and beans, and a hamburger with bubble and squeak type potato, washed down by a fizzy grapefruit adult soda and pineapple juice, and followed by pecan crusted chocolate pie.
Then we continued on the highway past large rivers, pine forest plantations, Civil War battlefields and endless advertising until sunset. Soon after dark we passed exit 56 for Fayetteville which was our goal for the day but instead of turning off, we continued down the highway as we had decided to get closer to Charleston. We turned off at Exit 22 at a town called Lumberton and parked at Holiday Inn. We walked around and compared prices and rooms at 5 motels and ended up at Super 8 for $60 including tax and breakfast. We had dinner at a nearby Asian restaurant and then afterwards we walked over to Walmart where we saw hordes of Xmas shoppers snapping up last minute bargains and queuing patiently in long lines.
We began Friday with breakfast in the motel lobby. We started off with cornflakes and made ourselves some waffles in their waffle machine. After breakfast, we checked out of the motel and hit the road. Despite all our driving yesterday, it still took us over three hours to get to Charleston.
We arrived at Charleston after 1.00 pm, parked our car in the historical centre and went for a walk around to check out our accommodation options. We looked at a couple of options before falling in love with a room at the Meeting Street Inn. It was a heritage building and our room had a four poster bed, beautiful old furniture, paintings, fireplace, wallpaper and a walk-in-robe. As well as breakfast they included wine and cheese in the afternoon. It was more than our budget so we decided to have lunch before making a final decision.
We went to Jestine's Kitchen which served up traditional Southern "Low Country" food in a casual atmosphere. Everybody was really friendly when they found out we were from Australia and offered suggestions about what we should order. We had crab cakes and cornbread to start, followed by pork chop with rice and collard greens, and fried flounder with red rice and okra gumbo. We washed this down with some refreshing sweetened tea, and a YooHoo Chocolate Milk. For dessert, we had a lemon tart and tried coca cola pie – a very sweet and moist, slightly chocolaty cake. We staggered out of the restaurant and looked at a couple more accommodation options before deciding to take the room at the Meeting Street Inn for three nights.
We checked in, parked the car and then went for a walk around town. We didn't get very far because Suzie spotted a sale sign at Banana Republic and we spent the next 40 minutes selecting and trying on clothes. It was cold and getting dark by the time we left the store, and as it was almost wine and cheese time, we made our way back to the hotel. We sat on the beautiful couches in the hotel lobby and had tiny sausages in BBQ sauce, cheese, a delicious spicy crab dip and crackers with Burgundy wine while chatting to some other guests.
Already we could see that we were going to love Charleston. The town felt very different from New York and Washington and the people were very charming and polite.
We slept in on Christmas Day and had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel lobby. We chatted with Dean and Cindy over coffee, cereal, fruit, yoghurt and muffins before heading out for the day.
We walked to the end of Market Street past some empty market stalls, and then along the promenade past the neo classical Customs House and into a waterfront park with a flower bed of silver beet, rhubarb and purple cabbage, gorgeous pineapple shaped fountain, jetties with seagulls, reed fields with white and grey herons. Further on, we wandered along the boardwalk where we saw a couple of dolphins in the water. We walked past elegant historic mansions and townhouses to Battery Park at the tip of the Charleston peninsula, where we enjoyed some beautiful views across the water out to Fort Sumter. It had a monument to the Confederate defenders of Charleston and several cannons next to piles of cannonballs. We turned up King Street and zigzagged backwards and forwards across the street to take a closer look at some of the magnificent buildings and mansions. Some of the houses were up to three storeys high and many had for sale signs on them. The old buildings were different to anything that we had seen before. The antebellum plantation homes and mansions had a strong neo-classical influence with Greek style columns, capitals and facades with wooden shutters and beautiful wrought iron balcony and stair rails, gates, and window screens. Many of the more notable examples had plaques attached explaining the history behind the building.
We stopped at one of the few shops open and had a light lunch after queuing for a while. After lunch we walked to the north part of the historic centre where we saw a model of the Hunley, the Confederate submarine outside the museum. As we walked further north the upmarket features of the southern half of the historic centre soon fell away. Many shops on the main King Street were empty and some buildings were quite dilapidated and boarded up.
We arrived back to the hotel just in time for wine, BBQ meatballs, spinach dip, cheese and crackers. We chatted to Cindy and Dean and then went out with them to the King Street Grill for dinner. We shared a plate of mussels in red (spicy tomato) sauce followed by a spicy chicken, shrimp and sausage jambalaya and pepperjack chicken pasta with a delicious salad. It was raining when we walked home. Luckily the forecast rain had not materialised until late in the evening and we had enjoyed clear blue skies for most of the day. All in all it was a beautiful day for Suzie's special day.
The sky was grey and it was raining when we woke up on Sunday. We chatted to Dean and Cindy over breakfast in the hotel lobby and then headed out to spend another lovely day wandering around Charleston's historic centre admiring the beautiful heritage buildings.
Our first stop were the market stalls under the Daughters of Confederacy Museum where we particularly admired the Gullah woven sweet grass baskets and some recycled pressed tin ceiling tiles. We walked up the other side of the Charleston peninsula where we saw an artificial lake before making our way to the College of Charleston complex. In the centre of the modern complex were the original Victorian buildings surrounded by old trees dripping with Spanish moss.
We walked down King Street, stopping to do a little post-Christmas sale shopping and then had lunch at Groucho's deli. When we came out it was snowing but the snow was melting as soon as it hit the pavement. We took photos of some art deco buildings on King Street and a synagogue on Hassett Street. At the Charleston Place Hotel we saw a lovely fountain topped with four horses and a falcon – the water was coming out of spikes on the horses' heads. Further down King Street, we window shopped at jewellery, antique and art shops including an Audubon shop with beautiful pictures and models of birds. Luckily for our wallets most of the shops were closed. We found a small laneway off King Street which took us past three churches and their graveyards. We walked past the Town Hall on Broad Street and turned up East Bay Street. Back on Market Street we were sucked in by a free sample of hot fresh praline (pecans, butter and sugar) and before we knew it we had spent $20 on three boxes when all we had wanted was two pralines to give to Cindy and Dean as a wedding present.
Back at the hotel, we caught up with Dean and Cindy over wine, crab dip and crackers. Then we headed out to Fleet Landing which was a seafood restaurant housed in an old US Navy building on the waterfront. The food was delicious – we started off by sharing a creamy "She-Crab" soup, followed by shrimp and grits (a surprisingly good creamy corn porridge) and black grouper with green beans and red rice.
We hurried back to the hotel in the snow and had one of our rich pralines in our room before bed. It was a lovely end to our last night in Charleston.
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