Carolopolis

I'm not quite sure what to think about Charlestown. It very much reminded me of being back in Europe with the small buildings packed pretty closely together. When we took our walking tour we found that there are plenty of places that you just have to know if you're going to get there. We would open a gate, walk through a narrow path, and find ourselves in some garden. I definitely got a deep sense of old-world charm.

I also learned that the government of Charleston can be liked to that of Springfield in the Simpsons in some respects. For example, there is a beautiful neo-Gothic French Hugenot church. The Hugenots came there to escape the persecution they found in Catholic France. They originally built a very simple building and the town didn't like it. One day a fire began to sweep through the city, so the government decided to blow up the church as a firebreak. What they didn't consider was the wood inside the church which ended up serving as a flaming arrow and spread the devastating fire even further.

Maybe it's my Yankee sensibilities, but I got a strange feeling with how service works in that town. There seemed to be a bit of a laissez-faire attitude from many of the service people. We had a sense of that when we had breakfast at our B&B's sister facility. We also got that when we ate breakfast at a local cafe the second morning. I went to Italy with low expectations. I'm not sure why they were higher in Charleston other than it is a tourist town in the US. Somehow I don't think that any problem with service will keep people from going there, nor should it.

Our next stop in the south will be Savannah. That should be fun too, especially if we get to do the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil walking tour.