May 30, 2022 Charleston, South Carolina day #1

At 6 a.m., the ship was just 22 nautical miles from Charleston. We climbed up to Deck 11 as the sun rose and walked for 45 minutes until the Tuscan Grill opened for breakfast at 8. After breakfast we watched as the ship docked in Charleston, South Carolina. The ship has travelled 1634 nautical miles since we left Cape Liberty one week ago. The exact location is 32°46.98’ N and 79°55.40’. As we approached the pier, we could see some of the ships at Patriot’s Point Naval and Maritime Museum. Very noticeable was the decommissioned US aircraft carrier, Yorktown, across the Cooper River. It was commissioned in April 1943. There is also a decommissioned submarine beside it. Today is American Memorial Day and the first of two days here. There were fluffy billowing clouds that were slightly grey and the temperature was already 24°C with a light breeze. We were off the ship by 10:15 a.m. to follow, by walking, the Downtown Area Shuttle (DASH) green route, since there were well over a dozen people waiting at the bus stop by the street entrance to the cruise terminal. It was about a 5.5 km. walk. We started along Market Street ,which runs along the City Market buildings, for four blocks to Meeting Street. The market is partly enclosed and air conditioned but most of it is just a roofed building with no walls along its length. The City Market was established in 1807. It has lots of vendors, similar to the St. Norbert Market, without the farmers. We returned to the ship for lunch.

After lunch, we met our group in the terminal for a bus tour to the Charleston Tea Garden. On the drive there our guide, Judy, told us about Charleston’s history. It was established in 1670, the same year that the Hudson’s Bay Company was given its charter for Rupertsland. Charleston was a Royal City of England, competing with the French city at Québec in Canada (New France) and the Spanish city of St. Augustine in Florida. At first the area around Charleston, west of the Ashley River, was used to grow rice. Africans were brought to the area to the rice plantations since they knew the rice growing methods. Charleston became very prosperous, becoming the richest city in North America between 1700 and 1863. During that time there were five major fires , the last one consuming 500 buildings.

The Charleston Tea Garden is the only tea plantation in the United States. It is a 120 acre farm on the outskirts of the city and was established about 60 years ago. The bus dropped us off by the gift shop nestled in trees with Spanish Moss draped from them. The tour began with a visit to the gift shop, then a video of the tea harvesting and processing. There are usually seven harvests of the young growth between May and October. There are 18 fields trimmed by a hybrid machine created from parts of a cotton picking machine and a tobacco picking machine, which replaces hundreds of manual workers. The fields are trimmed about every 18 days. The tea plants start to blossom into white flowers in late October and the tea picking is suspended for the season. Once picked the tea leaves are sent to the factory where the leaves are placed in a sieve twice to remove stocks and stems and then finally through static electricity to remove the last bits. Next, they are withered to remove moisture as the leaves are 80 % moisture and by the process end they are only three percent moisture. They then go into the rotovane for crushing and then oxidized and dried at 250°F. Green tea is not dried at this point. Black tea is dried for 50 minutes and Oolong tea is dried for 15 minutes – all from the same tea leaves. Bergamot is added to produce Earl Grey tea. It takes five pounds of fresh tea leaves to produce one pound of dried tea leaves. Next our group of 36 took the trolley into the tea fields for a look at the tea plants. Tea plants can live for hundreds of years. There are no pesticides or fungicides used. There are three ponds to use to irrigate if there is not enough rain. We visited the greenhouse where new plants are nurtured for at least 18 months. In 1987 Bill Hall bought the farm from Lipton after it tried to renew tea farming with an experimental field with 320 varieties of tea plants. Bill took the eight most hardy varieties and became successful and sold some of the company to the Bigelow Tea Company in 2003. To naturally make decaffeinated tea, just put the tea leaves in a teapot and add hot water, steep for a minute and pour off the water, then pour more hot water in the teapot and steep as desired. Sixty-five percentage of the caffeine will be removed in this manner. We spent two hours at the tea garden then returned to Charleston after a brief stop to see the Angel Tree. A living oak tree estimated to be 1,400 years old on the property of the Angel family. The branches droop down and when they reach the ground they produce roots and start to grow up again. We arrived back at the ship in time to dash to the dining room for our early sitting. After dinner we watched David Anthony’s magic show, before relaxing on the loungers on Deck 4 to create today’s entry.

Total steps 23,592