Right Wing Nation

A couple of blocks from here is Meeting Street–called Meeting Street because Puritans built a meeting house on the street in 1681. Puritans in South Carolina? Who knew? Romanesque architecture, unusual to say the least for Puritans (though the church burned in the 1890s and was rebuilt)–and you don’t think of Puritans, magnolias, and palms at the same time, either. But here, they all coexist, along with the oldest graveyard in Charleston, with graves dating back to 1690–and this, folks, is what is known as history (click on the picture to see the larger version). Note all the crypts. We’re in the lowlands here, right on the coast, not unlike New Orleans. Burying bodies isn’t a real good idea here (unless you want to see them floating around):

Italian ice, my ass!

That’s more like it!

The room wasn’t ready when we got here, so we headed out of the hotel. Right across the street was this:

It looks like a place where you find out where to go, right? So we went inside. There was a woman working inside–Marie–with a thick Brooklyn accent (pretty out of place here, to say the least). She was very nice and helpful, gave us maps and coupons, then told us to take a tour and sent us down the street.

So far, everything seemed fine. We were herded into another building, and after we showed credit cards, were asked to fill out a form with lots of suspicious questions, like income, etc. We were then herded upstairs to watch a presentation.

They were trying to sell us the vacation package equivalent of time shares.

That’s how we spent the first two hours here. Sitting through a “why you’ll save all this money if you spend 7K here today” presentation. We eventually escaped, settled into the room, then headed out to find something to eat.

Food in the historic district is easily found in the Old Market area, so that’s where we headed. There were a number of promising choices, but we settled on the Noisy Oyster (we had considered Hyman’s, but there were way too many people waiting to get in).

There were two things on the menu that pulled it into the Noisy Oyster. Fried green tomatoes on cheese grits with a pepper-corn relish (and God, that was good), and a coconut custard cake. I got the green tomatoes (obviously), scallops (broiled) with Carolina red rice, and the coconut cake.

The scallops were incredibly good–just done, and no more–the rice was great (the tasso ham was the star there), the fried green tomatoes and grits, well, that’s one of the two things I’d go back for. The other was that cake.

Yeah okay, so I got the idea of taking a picture after I’d taken a bite out of it. Rich coconut custard in between the layers, a meringue icing outside, and coconut everywhere. Remarkable. Actually, they seem to do lots of remarkable cakes in the Old Market area. We passed a bakery that had a cake in the window that must have been ten inches high. If there hadn’t been so many people there, I would have begged to take a picture of it. And there’s another place with a five-layer coconut cake.

You knew coconut was my favorite thing in the world, right?

The news said it was getting up to 95 today. Wonderful.

I don’t think we’re in Pennsylvania anymore, Toto . . .

This is the Old Market. Upstairs is the Daughters of the Confederacy, and behind it, the Confederate Museum (there was no way with this zoom to get close enough to get a readable picture, but that’s what those letters say up there). Of course, it all started here–and I hope we can squeeze in a trip to Fort Sumter.

Pennsylvania is very Civil War-y too, but with a decidedly blue slant. You’re unlikely to find a memorial to Jefferson Davis in the Keystone State.

So this place is a block down the street, and it may be perfectly fine (smells good), but why eat Memphis barbecue in South Carolina? There’s a great big book of menus from local places downstairs in the lobby. Maybe we’ll check it out.

It’s hot, but not as bad as I feared. Got pulled into a two-hour presentation (details about that later). Ahem. Spent only 2 hours and 10 minutes in the air to get here, though the State College airport has to have the most inefficient, incompetent TSA personnel anywhere. More about that later too.