Travel
Southern Belles
We’d seen the stately homes and soaring steeples of Charleston, S.C., before, but never like this. As we gazed at the skyline from a small boat floating in the harbor, dozens of dolphins suddenly surfaced, leaping and diving.
By: Lynn Langway
That delightful dolphin encounter was only one of the unexpected pleasures my husband and I encountered on a five-day drive along the coastal plains of South Carolina and Georgia. We wanted to reacquaint ourselves with three Lowcountry destinations that had charmed us on previous trips: Charleston and Beaufort, S.C; and Savannah, Ga. We discovered that each of these beautiful places can always surprise you, no matter how many times you return. What’s more, you need to travel only 116 miles to visit all three.
We started our road trip in Savannah, the southernmost of the trio. To reorient ourselves, we first took a trolley tour around the 2.5-square-mile historic landmark district -- one of the biggest and best preserved in the United States. Our guide showed us the Gothic mansion where during the Civil War, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman decided to get to know the city, rather than destroy it. Then she pointed out the many locales that appeared in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” the 1994 book and 1997 movie that brought Savannah new notoriety.
But Savannah is best appreciated on foot. British Gen. James Oglethorpe laid it out in 1733 as a grid of streets intersected by public squares. You can still stroll through 21 of these spaces, which range from grand, European-style plazas surrounded by imposing churches and homes, to oak-shaded parks. We passed through squares both majestic and modest on a three-mile, round-trip walk south from River Street to Forsyth Park, with its glorious gardens and exuberant fountain. En route, we stopped at ShopSCAD, which displays art and crafts made by faculty and students at the Savannah College of Arts and Design. SCAD runs the nearby Gryphon Tea Room in a restored pharmacy with fabulous stained glass and homemade biscotti.
Savannah’s many mansions also warrant a closer look. The 200-year-old Owens-Thomas House on Oglethorpe Square is a masterpiece of English Regency design by William Jay, notable not only for its colorful skylights and brass-bound staircase, but also for its intact slave quarters in the cellar below -- still painted the original “haint blue” to scare away evil spirits.
We dined on heady gumbo in the cozy brick-walled restaurant Alligator Soul, and savored healthy renditions of corn chowder and lemon chicken salad at Firefly Cafe. Venturing 15 miles east to Tybee Island, Savannah’s beach town, we explored the moats and battlements of historic Fort Pulaski, a must-see for Civil War buffs, and enjoyed a sunset along with our tasty crab stew on the deck at AJ’s Dockside.
Our next stop was 46 miles northeast in Beaufort, the smallest, but perhaps most atmospheric of these three cities. Chartered in 1711, Beaufort (pronounced BEW-furt by locals) fell to northern troops in 1861 without much of a fight, thereby preserving its antebellum and colonial homes, and ancient live oaks festooned with Spanish moss. Set beside the sparkling Beaufort River, the town looks like a movie set -- and it is. Both “The Prince of Tides” and “The Great Santini,” based on novels by native Pat Conroy, were shot here, along with “The Big Chill” and much of “Forrest Gump.”
Take a horse-drawn carriage ride downtown and then return on foot for a better look at the handsome home where “The Big Chill” reunion took place. Developers have been kept at bay; on streets that run to the edge of the wetlands, signs declare: “This view preserved by City of Beaufort.”
But our most memorable sights lay across the river on St. Helena Island, the heart of Gullah culture. Brought here by West African slaves and fostered by their descendants, Gullah -- the word may be derived from “Angola” or a tribal name -- is at once a rhythmic dialect, a culinary style and artistic influence. Follow fascinating Gullah history at the Penn Center, established by Quakers in 1862 as the first school to educate freed slaves. Penn, now a National Historic Monument, became an incubator of the Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Leadership Conference often met here. Nearby at the Red Piano Too Gallery, in an old grocery store, you can admire African-American folk art and crafts past and present, including the area’s famous woven sweetgrass baskets.
We sampled two different tastes of Beaufort. At the comfy Magnolia Bakery Cafe, the tablecloths were humble oilcloth, but the crab salad was full of fresh crabmeat. On the waterfront, the sleek Saltus River Grill served twists on southern classics.
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For the finale, we drove 70 miles northeast to Charleston, the oldest of our cities (founded in 1670), where Mary Clark Coy, a fourth-generation local, led us on her “Charleston 101” walking tour. She wove history and architecture into a compelling narrative, drawing our attention to details we might have missed, such as the lions’ heads that hid earthquake bolts on a townhouse, or the lacy iron gates expertly wrought by the African-American blacksmith Philip Simmons.
We followed up later with a tour of the Nathaniel Russell House, a neoclassical 1808 gem. Several plantations outside the city are also well worth seeing. We enjoyed the house tour at homey Magnolia Plantation, and found its Audubon Swamp Garden even more entertaining; you can see why director Wes Craven decided to shoot “Swamp Thing” here amid the ghost trees and camellias.
But the most moving Charleston sights were at the Old Slave Mart Museum downtown. Here, the men and women who actually built and tended to most of the city’s splendors were warehoused, plumped up and sold like livestock until 1863. Reopened in 2007 after major renovations, this understated museum makes a devastating display of old shackles, bills of sale and the recorded voices of some who lived to bear witness.
We ended our travels out on the water, on a two-hour Salt Marsh Adventure with Captain Anton Dumars, who takes visitors oystering, shrimping and exploring aboard his 24-foot boat, the Tideline, on daily trips from Folly Beach, a funky seaside town just outside Charleston proper.
That night, we feasted on some of those succulent South Carolina oysters at the Charleston Grill, where the stellar variations on southern cuisine included grilled steak with Vidalia biscuits. For dessert, don’t even try to resist their diabolical riff on jelly donuts: ricotta fritters with sour cherry preserves and lemon ricotta ice cream.
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