Visiting Charleston, SC in the middle of August probably wasn’t the best idea, but we had such a fun time—Ryan and I made the drive anyway to the Holy City, for a three-day stay at the Notso Hostel.
The hostel was really cool, and I recommend it to anyone visiting Charleston. The building we stayed in had six individual rooms, and a kitchen on each floor to boot. We didn’t cook much while we were there, but just knowing we had the ability to was pretty neat—I think when we come back next time we’ll have some groceries in tow.
We got there Friday evening and biked from the hostel to King St., supposedly a great place to get a beer and some dinner. It was hot, incredibly hot, and we were sweaty and gross by the time we got there. Every restaurant was pretty nice, and I wasn’t sure we’d be allowed in like we were. We settled on a nacho place, and chowed down.
The next day we walked all around the Battery and Rainbow Row. Charleston is famous for their ancient houses, some of them built as long ago as the 1600s. All along the Battery were houses with plaques identifying them and a little bit of their history. I’ve actually been to Charleston before, but don’t remember most of it (especially since it’s very similar to Savannah). 
One thing I remembered was the addition of those X structures in the picture above (they show up in old buildings all the time, and look different on the exterior). Those are long metal rods that go though the building and are designed to hold it together and stable.
A lot of these pretty pastel houses and palm trees really made me feel like I was in Miami. I’ve been watching a lot of Dexter lately, so it felt appropriate. 
Ryan was looking sporty too in his Miami dad getup.
We biked all around Charleston, looking at all the houses we could (except the ones on cobblestone streets, which don’t work well with bike tires). I tried to snap pictures from my bike while I was in motion, which Ryan didn’t enjoy.
There were abandoned and dilapidated houses right next door to some that ranged in the millions. It seemed like every third or fourth house had succumbed to blight, and a lot were being torn down or renovated. There was a lot of scaffolding and boarded up windows alongside the wrap-around porches and balustrades. 
You wouldn’t guess from these pictures, but the heat index on Saturday was 115 degrees. That is SO INSANELY HOT. We were constantly ducking into restaurants and shady spots, trying to gulp down some water before a heat stroke.
I bought a palm flower from a guy on the pier, because of course.
Sunday morning was beautiful, and we took a trip on the way out of town to the Angel Oak tree. It’s somewhere between 400 and 1400 years old—how insane is that?
