October 10th – 14th, 2023

Check out part 1 at https://exploringduo.com/south-1!

Before we dive into part 2, let’s backtrack and get into the backstory of why we’re on this southern trip in the first place. I’ve always had this idyllic image of the South in my head, i.e. sitting on the front porch in our rocking chairs, warm breeze, nowhere to go and nothing to do except wait for the pie in the window to cool. How silly, you say? My name is Dixie after all, and a part of me wants to live in this world of Southern hospitality. In this fantasy, I’m not sure if it’s my house or a bed and breakfast— in fact I barely know what a B&B is except that it’s cute in my head. So this vague idea is my inspiration for visiting the south along with a vague desire of wanting to stay at a B&B. With some research, two cities that had seemed to fit this mental image were Savannah and Charleston. Plus we had extra time so tacked on Memphis to the end of the trip. We’d never visited it before so hey, why not?

So now that you know that, we decided to do the B&B part of our trip in Charleston. After countless hours of B&B research, I was disappointed that B&Bs turned out to be kind of old, ugly, and there’s actually nothing too special about them over hotels, totally not worth the price to me. I had given up on this until Victor convinced me we should do it; this whole trip was based off fulfilling my dreams. In a turn of events, we booked the fanciest hotel, price-wise, we’ve ever booked before, Hotel Bennett. We only took it because his credit card had a discount and gave us breakfast credit. It’s not even at all like what I was going for…way too posh and fancy instead of laid-back, cute, and lazy, but we decided to do it anyway since we’d enjoy it over the more old and run-down looking B&Bs. And did I mention it was expensive? So of course we made sure to take salt baths, explore every floor, and wear the slippers. We ordered in-room breakfast all the time to use that credit. We thought the decor was fancier and did think it’s more welcoming to come home to a nicer environment… especially since they make your room multiple times a day and stick a cute little chocolate square on your pillows. *But* ultimately we agreed a luxury hotel is not worth paying for since it doesn’t give you anything additional over a standard hotel; spa experiences, poolside cabanas, you have to pay extra for all that anyways. For how much luxury hotels cost, we’d rather stretch our money farther by spending it on something else.

Enough about B&Bs, let’s move on to what Charleston has to offer.

Touring the museums at Patriots Point was my favorite activity in Charleston. It surprises me since I’m not that interested in learning about war or even history. It always goes in one ear and out the other. But we arrived when the museum opened and went first to the Vietnam Experience Exhibit, honestly not the main attraction at Patriots Point. When we entered, a Vietnam veteran volunteering that day led us in, telling us what the war was about, all the things to see at this exhibit and then we pretty much had this place to ourselves for the next hour. I didn’t know that the Vietnam War was actually two wars, or the U.S. supported Ho Chi Minh initially just to then oppose him, or even that after all these years we lost. After learning about the gruesome Tet Offensive, I was then deeply affected when I watched a video of a veteran who fought for his country just to return home to his fellow citizens’ hatred of him and them calling him a baby killer. It hurt him and still does, and he looked like he was going to cry. I wanted to too. After the exhibit, I had to ask the volunteer what he did during the war. He was a police investigator during the first tour and I believe an officer during the second tour, sent in when we were suffering losses during the Tet Offensive. Oh my goodness, wow, I’m thinking and I hoped my interest conveyed my appreciation.

But there were multiple museums there. The next one was USS Laffey and when we sat down inside the ship for the History Channel’s story of its battle against a concentrated attack of Kamikazes, we didn’t anticipate being so interested that we watched the entire show. Again I can’t explain how awed I felt learning the intensity of the situation and courage of those who defended the ship. Lastly we did the paid tour of the USS Yorktown with a spunky lady, 75 years old, from a family of military, so interested in this stuff she had once crawled through the ship exploring its sectioned off rooms, gotten lost and had to radio in help. We ended up spending almost 5 hours at all of these museums in total and I left feeling like I got hit with a sense of patriotism.

Another activity very fitting for this destination was the Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens. Slavery is just so integral to this city’s past. There are several plantations in Charleston but a big reason I chose this one is because I wanted to see the giant oak trees lining the road leading up to the main house. They set up a grand, epic way to enter the property. I enjoyed the house tour with our friendly guide with a thick Southern accent. I was overly excited to ride the tractor trolley tour through the fields. We also listened to a brief talk at the slave quarters. Finally there’s a “Exploring the Gullah Culture” where our presenter sang songs and spoke Gullah phrases. We learned something interesting in all presentations except the last one. The last felt more like entertainment to me and something came off weird when the one black person I see working here is entertaining an entirely white crowd with song and dance. Maybe I’m giving it too much thought.

Nathaniel Russel House is another house tour where you get to learn about life back then. Our guide was terrible so this sucked. Aside from rushing through everything, it felt like she was just reciting a script and did not know much beyond that. And compared to the Owens-Thomas house in Savannah, we didn’t focus on the slavery aspect nearly as much. In fact, one thing I was disappointed by with Charleston was that none of the attractions did enough justice to the lives of enslaved people imo, like this house tour and even Boone Hall Plantation (though Victor disagrees). During the tractor tour, we spent plenty of time talking about the modern day events that this plantation hosts, from strawberry picking to corn mazes to wine under the oaks. What a rosy association I’ll have with this beautiful property. But no! This doesn’t seem right. I think the gruesome slave labor that occurred here deserved more than the 15min talk.

Charleston seems like a bigger city than Savannah so there was more to do at night besides bars. Like shows! We saw improv at Theater 99 for $10 a ticket one night, not bad at all. There’s also this unique show called the Black Fedora Comedy Mystery Theater where volunteers in the audience get handed roles and a script to participate alongside real actors. Having visited plenty of cities by now, the usual activities like parks, museums, shops all start blending together so I was excited for this show as it’s something new we don’t usually go for. I thought about how if you’re a volunteer actor, you gotta just forget yourself and have fun and it’ll be more fun for yourself and everyone. But of course, we are not the volunteering type lol. The best part was when the actor asked Victor to stand up and he flat out shook his head no. I’m like, you’re allowed to just say no?

There’s typical day time city activities too. We did the Charleston Museum, which was a lot of reading.. a good history of the city but too much reading. We went through the Historic Charleston City Market in no time since we’re not interested in buying this kind of stuff. Robert Lange Studios was a nice art gallery worth walking through. I read that this art gallery is different in that it aims to be inclusive rather than stuffy and snobby so we liked walking through picking out which paintings we liked. White Point Garden and the walk on The Battery i.e. the waterfront was nice, all the way up to Rainbow Row i.e. the painted ladies of Charleston and Joe Riley Waterfront Park with its pineapple fountain. And of course King St. which was plenty of shopping that we returned to for window shopping on multiple days when we had too much time to kill. Especially from our impression of King St., Charleston felt like a place for older, rich white ladies to have girl time. Victor noticed there seemed to be less men lol.

It rained a lot the second half of our trip. This forced us to reshuffle our schedule and still put a damper on many activities. Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge is one that Victor really admired, even nicer than Bay Bridge in his opinion. But it was so cloudy there was no chance of seeing sunset when we planned to walk across it. We just walked around its base in Mount Pleasant. Likewise, Folly Beach is probably a very nice beach, but when it’s grey and windy, all we did was walk on the fishing pier, down a street and then ran out of things to do. It’s not fair either because we had just gone to Tybee Beach in Savannah and the weather was nice when we went. We also went to Fort Sumter, pretty cool since it was where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. But there was a light rain while we visited and also on the 30min boat ride to and from the fort. Again we had already done Fort Pulaski in Savannah so this was the second fort in the same trip, during worse weather, and required a boat ride which costs additional. We did get to listen to a ranger talk here that we didn’t get to at Fort Pulaski though due to timing, so that was a nice bonus for Fort Sumter. And then there was Cypress Gardens on an overcast morning. Cypress Gardens is where they filmed Allie and Noah rowing through this romantic swamp in The Notebook. It’s lovely, but it’s not quite the same on a cloudy day.

The gloomy weather did not detract from the amazingness that is Angel Oak Tree however. Angel Oak Tree is a 400+ year old live oak tree. It’s humongous. When branches become so heavy, they sag to the ground and actually start to grow upwards again. It’s a beauty to witness. We only got to spend 15min here though sine we arrived so close to park closing time at 5pm.

The last thing to remember about the low-country portion of our trip in Savannah and Charleston are the savage, savage mosquitos. I was first to fall to mosquito bites but after that, the real sufferer was boyfriend. With a giant bite on the forehead coming in as honorable mention, his most spectacular set of bites was 5 on the butt! With insect repellant on the exposed areas of his hands and ankles, those damn mosquitoes must’ve stung through his long pants and boxers instead.

Quick note about food before we move on to Memphis. We loved 167 Raw – the scallop po’ boy was so delicious, Glass Onion – a quality restaurant that actually has a chill environment, and Bowen’s Island Restaurant. I quite liked the vibe of Bowen’s Island Restaurant, would be an awesome casual spot for friends to hang out with good fresh seafood. Bertha’s Kitchen also had great fried chicken, still no Willie Mae’s like in New Orleans but better than Gus’s which I’ll mention later on.

From here we flew to Memphis, which actually doesn’t make that much sense since it’s several states away. But we had extra days to go somewhere so it seemed like a waste if we didn’t. We picked Memphis rather arbitrarily, it’s just a city we’ve heard of but never been.

Visiting Memphis was a shock. Our first clue to the mild culture shock ahead was the uber from airport to hotel. It was abnormally low cost, smelled of cigarettes, and the neighborhoods we drove by and finally arrived in had a sad, rundown feel. Any of these small things would not mean much on its own and we had booked a hotel farther from downtown to save money so I thought maybe it’s just this neighborhood. But this all remained consistent throughout our visit. Even visiting downtown later on revealed nothing better. Another uber driver would tell us he’s always dreamed of visiting California one day. How can he when uber rates here are so low? I later on would google to discover that Memphis is on the list for cities with highest poverty rates.

Over the next two days, we visited a few tourist attractions. First was a farmer’s market that we spent a mere 5min at. I mused that we used to love farmers markets. Did they change or did we? This one had not much which didn’t help. We went to Bass Pro Shops, this giant pyramid structure full of shopping for enthusiasts of guns, fishing, red state kind of pastimes. We heard there were activities there, so we inquired about archery but actually you need to bring your own bow lol. So unfortunately this unique attraction was a letdown too.

Beale Street is an often mentioned tourist attraction, with bars that reminded me of walking down Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Since we don’t go to bars though, we checked out the vibe on this street but that was kind of it. I did get a milkshake at A. Schwab. Even Big River Crossing didn’t work out. It’s a pedestrian walk over the Mississippi River and at one point, you could have one foot in Tennesse and one foot in Arkansas, how cool is that? But we accidentally navigated to the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge beside it, with only cars driving over it, rumbling this crumbling rusty bridge with no other pedestrians nor any official sign to indicate we’re at the border. We found out after the fact we were on the wrong bridge lol, so this one is on us. We visited one music museum, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music because you have to visit one at least when there are so many music museums here. It didn’t leave a strong impression since we’re not big into soul plus we were museumed out after visiting museums in 3 different cities by this point. We ended up killing time by booking a private escape room for just us 2 since we didn’t want to visit anymore museums, but… the benefit of visiting a cheaper city like this is that activities like this are cheap too!

There were some gems we did enjoy. Tom Lee Park was a peaceful long walk along the Mississippi River. We passed by outdoor basketball courts full of youth playing games and they even had a live DJ which added to the fun, lively atmosphere. My favorite attraction of Memphis was the National Civil Rights Museum. This museum was formerly the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 and was converted to this museum. I found this museum incredibly impactful and moving. It does an excellent job walking you through the history of oppression of black people in this country and how our civil rights leaders stood up and fought for change.

For food, we visited tons of BBQ places, like 3 over the course of 2 days here and also Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken.

Memphis is unlike any other city we’ve visited before. It’s just not as affluent and probably not where tourists go. Though we had no idea when we planned this, I don’t regret the experience and appreciate a perspective outside of our bubble every so often. As for Charleston, I’m glad I finally got to check off that Southern trip fantasy that I had planned but had to cancel from pre-pandemic times. All in all it was a productive trip to 3 cities but after several weeks of traveling (this trip was connected to other visits on the east coast), we were ready to finally go home.