First stop: Summerville, SC, the official birthplace of Sweet Tea.

What is interesting to note is that we could not find a restaurant in Summerville that claimed the best sweet tea — in fact, the lady at the visitor center recommended McDonald’s as having really good sweet tea. Sold!

Summerville’s Azalea Park

We took in Summerville’s Walking Tour of Homes and Flowers and enjoyed more great architecture like this Victorian in the Queen Anne style. The current family has occupied this house for almost 100 years.

From Summerville, we visited the Frampton Plantation. This farmhouse was built in 1868.

Lisa enjoys her rocking chair and the view of the live oak from the porch.

Next up: a self-guided walking tour of the historic old town of Bluffton…

Church of the Cross, 1857.

Bluffton public boat dock. A huge rain storm pounds the earth in the distance

May River

Our last stop was to Hilton Head Island. We drove around checking out the expensive vacation homes and ended up at this public beach.

Coligny Beach

Definitely a great place for families to play and enjoy nature! We were pretty happy that the ocean breeze cooled us down from all the sticky heat.

Lisa is a history teacher, so naturally we started with the place where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Fort Sumter National Monument.

Since Fort Sumter is on an island, the only way to get there was via boat. So we took the first departure of the day at 9:30am.

Approaching Fort Sumter.

Visitors are allowed an hour to explore the fort before returning to the mainland.

After our visit to Fort Sumter, we had a small lunch and then took a Charleston history walking tour with Damn Yankee Tours. Our guide, Paulette, took us to major sights and others not-so-major…

St. Phillips Church

Our guide, Paulette, is a retired history teacher and since we were the only ones on the tour, she was our own personal guide for almost three hours

After our tour, we continued with the Old Exchange Building and Provost Dungeon — here we had a docent lead us through the dungeon area and told stories of some famous prisoners here, like Stede Bonnet, aka “The Gentleman Pirate”

The Old Exchange Building is where the Declaration of Independence was read for the citizens of South Carolina

Lisa is now able to check this one off and complete her “Halls of Freedom” list

Dinner at Fleet Landing, with regional specialties Hush Puppies stuffed with shrimp and lobster, and our main dish of shrimp and Andouille sausage over grits.

Charleston harbor

We concluded our evening with a stroll down the waterfront…

…and through more neighborhood streets

And finally, dessert!

Mmmm, pralines!