Charleston

It was snowing as I left the hostel in Boston but my flight wasn't until 11.30am so I wasn't worried about being delayed. I figured that this was probably the kind of weather they had to deal with every winter so it shouldn't pose too much of a problem. I took the subway to the airport, which I love being able to do. It only costs $2 and is not subject to traffic. I hate it when an airport is expensive or not easy to reach from the downtown area. Airport transport can be such a con. I had plenty of time to get my first flight, but had to run, for my connecting flight, between terminals in Philadelphia. I needn't have bothered, it was a little late taking off. I got to Charleston about 4pm to a beautiful, warm sunny day. I was very happy. I asked the information desk about getting to downtown and at first they told me that there were no buses and that I would have to take a shuttle for $12. I wasn't impressed, then they told me that there was a bus,it cost $1.50 but had left ten minutes ago. I decided to wait for the bus and wandered outside to look for the bus stop. Lo and behold I saw the bus coming, I made a dash for it, no mean feat with my rucksack and managed to get on. The bus driver was very kind and asked me where I wanted to go and made sure that I got off at the right stop.
I called Chris, my Charleston Couchsurfing host and he said he would meet me as he had just got off work. He was as good as his word. We went straight to a shop that one of his friends,Landon, works at. It's a cupcake shop and Landon very kindly gave me two cupcakes, a lemon one as that is what I wanted and a red velvet one as that is a speciality of the south. My trip to the south was starting well. We walked back to Chris's place, which is a little messy but my welcome was much better than in Boston and I would have a choice of one couch and two pull outs to sleep on. Chris drove Jaime,one of his room mates, and me to the local market for supplies, I bought a couple of bottles of wine and a pizza for dinner. We had planned to go out, but we all started drinking, people showed up at the house so we all stayed home. It was a great first night in Charleston. I couldn't wait for the rest of my time there.
As is my wont I walked around town the next day and got my bearings. This was an absolute joy as it was another warm,sunny day. I had made the right decision to come south. There wasn't much on my to do list for Charleston except Fort Sumter and I decided that I would do that the following day. I don't think that I've written about it but I have a notebook with all the U.S. states listed and the cities/places I want to go in those states. The cities are further broken down by what I want to do when I am there. I think it is the only organising I really did for this trip other than decided that I would spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with Meghan! I went back to the apartment in the late afternoon and got a call from another guy I had contacted on Couchsurfing, David. He had offered to host me but it would have required me to arrive later than I had and also his place was further from downtown, not walkable like Chris's. He wanted to know if I wanted to hang out, I said yes and he agreed to come to Chris's and we would take it from there. When he came over, we all, Chris, Jaime,Casey, Chris's other room mate and I, headed to a local bar,"The Recovery Room". David and I hadn't eaten so David ordered some "Tottachos", tater tots covered in cheese, sour cream and guacamole, like nachos and chicken wings. The food and the beer were excellent and I even managed not to have to walk back to Chris's when another of his friends gave me a ride back. I had another few beers before crashing on the couch.
When I woke the next morning the weather had changed for the worse, it was grey and overcast. As it wasn't raining too hard I went into downtown to the riverfront. Fort Sumter is an old fort on a man made island in Charleston Harbour and is run by the National Park Service. By this time the rain was coming down but I decided that as I was there I may as well go ahead and go out to the island. There isn't much to see, most of the fort walls were destroyed in the Civil War and in the centre of the fort is a large black,concrete bunker built during the Spanish-American war. It's totally out of place. I spent most of my visit huddled inside the museum ,only dashing out a couple of times to take photos before reboarding the boat for the ride back. Despite the weather I was glad that I had come, this is where the American Civil War started. I hung around the visitor centre to get warm before facing the weather again. It didn't look like it was going to stop any time soon. I spent a couple of hours in the library and it was still raining when I came out. I had had enough and headed back to the apartment. I ordered in pizza for my dinner and spent the rest of the day on the couch huddled under a blanket.