May 31, 2022 Charleston, South Carolina day #2

With the 2019 renovation of the ship, there are several USB ports in the cabin to charge multiple devices. Between us we have laptops, phones, cameras and a GPS device to keep charged, but, the internet connection is frustratingly slow even to get email. The Wi-Fi in the Charleston cruise terminal is very fast. In less than ten minutes, 27 photos can be uploaded.

It was another warm Charleston morning as we climbed to Deck 10 (about 200 steps on the staircase from Deck 3 to Deck 10) for breakfast at the Oceanview Café buffet.

The temperature was 22°C and sunny with a light breeze, just right for the morning walking tour. There were 18 people on the tour from the ship. We starting by walking up Market Street, past the market buildings already humming with customers, to Church Street and into the French Quarter to Meeting Street and Broad Street, which in 1680 was the widest street in the new city. The tour’s last stop before returning to the ship was The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon. It was just over two hours and covered 1.4 km (in 80 minutes) to the Old Exchange and then another .8 km (11 minutes) as we walked, by ourselves, through the Waterfront Park on our way back to the ship. There was 350 years of history packed into the walk.

Charleston, in the 18^th century, was one of five walled cities in North America – Québec City, Boston, St. Augustine, Florida and New Orléans being the others. There are no remnants of Charleston’s wall visible. King Charles II of England gave eight men – the 8 Lords of Proprietors – a land grant in North America known as Carolina. It covered the area now named North and South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Texas and all the land to the Pacific Ocean. Charleston moved to its present location in 1680 and has filled in the land as the city of about 170,000 grows. The infill covers streams and marsh and the streets near the water regularly flood after a rainstorm of several hours, then drain. The Pinkney family gave the market land in 1807 to Charleston on the condition that it be a market, 364 days a year, for provisions not slaves. Charleston was the richest city in North America in the 1700s and 1800s until the Civil War in the early 1860s. There are some different names for things that go back hundreds of years. The Elite wanted to be genteel so needing to use a toilet was called a necessary. Over at the market where meat and fish rotted in the gutters, rats (river dogs) and buzzards (golden Charleston eagles) feasted. There are over 271 churches in Charleston. It was decided late in 1600s that if seven or more people wanted to found a church they could. Travelling around the historic city centre were horse drawn wagons with the drivers giving a commentary. We were shown the old powder magazine which was designed to store gunpowder and, if it blew up, to direct the blast upwards. Between the ceiling and roof, there still is a three foot layer of sand – the least resistant part of the structure so that the walls do not blast outwards. We stopped at the Circular Church on Meeting Street where John Newton, the writer of the hymn Amazing Grace, heard a sermon inspiring him to write it. The walk was concentrated in the French Quarter where there are streets covered in the ballast stones that ships used to arrive with in port and then dump them to make room for cargo. They are hard to walk on.

From the last two weeks of May to the first two weeks of June, Charleston hosts the Spoleto Festival of the Arts and Music, attracting tens of thousands of visitors. This year for the first time in three years due to 2020 and 2021 being cancelled because of COVID. The final stop was the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon where Revolutionary army prisoners were held after the British captured Charleston in the early 1780s. Nearby was the place where domestic slaves were auctioned. Charleston also had a “Tea Party” due to the English government taxing tea in the colonies. The ship load of tea remained at the port before the British Red Coats took the 257 chests of tea to the Old Exchange basement in December 1773. In July 1776, after the British left, the revolutionary forces found it and sold it using the funds to pay for their resistance to British rule.

The Old Exchange has many rooms depicting history. Once the War of Independence ended, delegates ratified a newer Constitution to give the national government more power than the states. It took from July 1787 to May of 1790 for all the states to ratify the changes. There was a post office in the building in the 1800s.

Once the Old Exchange tour ended we returned to the ship, less than a kilometre away along the shady Waterfront Park. By noon the temperature was 30°C and humid, it was nice to return to the air conditioned ship for lunch up on Deck 10 in the Oceanview Café buffet. The ship is scheduled to leave at 5 p.m. today and the evening dress code is Evening Chic – a little bit dressier than normal. Lobster and Baked Alaska are on tonight’s menu.

Mid afternoon we had most of today’s activities recorded and Larry was able to upload photos in the terminal on its high speed internet. The 22 photos took less than three minutes instead of hours on the ship’s slower speed satellite internet.

Although the ship was scheduled to leave at 5 p.m., it was closer to 5:30 p.m. when the ship pulled away even though the ropes had been released from the bollards on the pier prior to 5 p.m. Tonight, the evening dress code is Evening Chic – a little bit dressier than normal, but no longer the semi-formal attire common on pre-COVID cruises. After dancing to a few tunes played by Ocean Beat in the Rendez-vous Lounge on Deck 4, we climbed the stairs to the Elite Loyalty Cocktail Party hosted by the Senior Officers at the Sky Lounge on Deck 11 at 5:30 p.m. We made it back to the Cosmopolitan Dining Room on Deck 5 before 6 p.m when the dining room doors close. Lobster tail, rack of lamb and Baked Alaska were on tonight’s menu. Milton and Karen were back at the neighbouring table tonight, they had eaten at Le Petit Chef specialty restaurant last evening. Karen assured us that they would be coming to dinner tomorrow. As people enjoyed their dessert, the chefs and cooks from the dining room kitchen paraded through the dining room to generous applause from the guests. The theatre show of Motown songs was not of interest to us, so again we climbed the stairs to the Sky Lounge on Deck 11 for the daily prerecorded ballroom music from 7 to 8. There were two other couples in the lounge. We had the dance floor to ourselves, but the floor was too sticky for safe dancing. We enjoyed our Dark and Stormy cocktail and Newcastle brown ale. In our cabin was the daily program for tomorrow, which we can also access on the Celebrity app, and an invitation to the 11 a.m. Captain’s Club Wine Tasting as something to do tomorrow on the Sea Day back to Cape Liberty which docks on Thursday morning.

It was discouraging to see a headline that “Taiwan says it deployed fighter jets to warn off 30 warplanes sent by China into its air defence zone.”

Total steps today 13,420