Welcome back to “Great Urban Weekend Escapes.” Today’s pick is an easy one - everyone seems to be in love with Charleston these days, and in recent years the city has been awash in awards and accolades. It has been named the Number One US City by readers polls of both of the nation’s two highest profile travel magazines: for three years in a row by Conde Nast Traveler and two straight by Travel + Leisure, which ranked it second on earth only to Kyoto.
So the only question is what exactly makes Charleston so good? One big differentiator is that it has also been repeatedly ranked the nation’s friendliest city, which is a surefire way to become a great vacation spot. The area also has excellent food, as both an epicenter of one of America’s great regional cuisines, low country cooking (think shrimp and grits), and a leader at the forefront of the trendy rise of upscale neo-Southern cuisine. It plays way above its weight class in terms of luxury hotels, is surrounded by gorgeous beaches, and offers world-class golf, something few destinations its size can rival. But most of all, Charleston oozes historic charm, from its cobblestone streets and centuries old architecture to its many important sites.
For new readers, I’ll very briefly recap the logic behind this recurring feature, Great Urban Weekend Escapes. In my very first column on Indianapolis, I explain the particulars in much greater detail, so if you want to learn more about my criteria, read that one.
The Battery, the tip of the peninsula Charleston sits on, is lined with preserved histrionic homes... [+]
The concept is simple: As someone who travels a great deal and is always short on time, I’ve become a big fan of more manageable cities, those perfect for weekend or long weekend escapes. My rules for what makes a city a great weekend choice include at least one standout attraction, something people travel to see, like the Alamo. It must also have unique or diverse cuisine. Natural attractions, great lodging, notable cultural offerings and/or museums, and interesting shopping are all big pluses.
I’ve said this before: If you live in Charleston, please take your selection as a compliment. I’m not suggesting your hometown is only “worth” a couple of days - I happily live in a town of less than 5,000 souls with two restaurants and no major attractions. I’m saying your city is user-friendly enough to be enjoyed in a weekend - hopefully the first of many weekend visits.
The downtown historic district is one of the great American neighborhoods and exploring it by horse... [+]
If you’ve already been to Charleston I’ll assume you get its charms, so the laundry list of assets I’m about to run through is mainly for the uninitiated. The standout attraction here is not one building or experience but rather the total living history. Ft. Sumter National Monument is a must see, the spot where the Civil War began. It sits on an island in the harbor and is reached by regularly scheduled ferries, combining the best of a scenic cruise with the exploration of the fort itself, easily accessed from the heart of downtown. This year they started offering new sunset tours of the fort. The area was once the rice capital of the New World, with many lavish plantations, and the one to visit first is Middleton Place, a grandiose place built by rice that spans 65-acres and is home to America’s oldest landscaped gardens, along with a museum, house tour and full service restaurant. Magnolia Plantation is a close second, also with extensive gardens, dating to the 17th century, and beautiful grounds dripping with Spanish Moss. For tea lovers Charleston Tea Plantation is unique in that it claims to be the only tea grown in the nation. More recent history can be experienced at the impressive Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum, home to a “fleet” anchored by the huge aircraft carrier USS Yorktown along with a destroyer, submarine, numerous aircraft and museum displays (ferries to Ft. Sumter also leave from here). But perhaps the biggest dose of history is the city itself, the part of old Charleston set on a peninsula tapering to the perfectly preserved homes along the waterfront Battery, with an extensive historic downtown that packs in important 18th and early 19th century buildings, including homes, government buildings, the city market and churches, all in a concise and easily visited place. There are numerous walking tours offered with various historical (and even haunted/ghost) focuses, and I recommend this highly - I’ve done them a couple of times myself, and few cities are better set up for seeing so much so quickly and easily. For couples, romantics or families, Charleston is also famous for its historic downtown tours by horse drawn carriage.
Ft. Sumter National Monument, where the Civil War began, sits in Charleston's harbor and can be... [+]
It’s not historic but the easy to access South Carolina Aquarium is another top attraction, and so are the endless beaches and watersports ringing the city, with everything from laying in the sun to surfing to crewed sailing charters.
Perhaps the hardest part of visiting Charleston is deciding where to stay. On my last trip I was a guest of the Forbes 4-Star Belmond (formerly Orient-Express) Charleston Place which is the default luxury choice. It’s big and fully featured with a wide variety of swank room types, has its own mini-mall of top shops, a wonderful full-service spa, very happening lobby bar, the Thoroughbred Club, a more casual dining option specializing in local low country cuisine, the Palmetto Café, and one of the perennial top restaurants in town, the Forbes 4-Star Charleston Grill, fine dining with pronounced Southern flair. Charleston Place is perfectly located and hits all the right buttons.
The Forbes 4-Star Belmond Charleston Place is the city's preeminent full-service luxury hotel.... [+]
A more modern contrast is the Forbes 4-Star Market Pavilion Hotel, at least by Charleston standards. It is just a decade old but the building dates to the 1700s and is decorated with more than 300 pieces of original art, including numerous antique portraits of US Presidents. The modern part is the guest rooms and some other facilities, such as the rooftop pool bar (with DJ!), very unusual for the city, and it is also home to one of the few high-end steakhouses, Grill 225. The other two top downtown choices are notable for their smaller, more intimate scale. The Planters Inn is an atmospheric Relais & Chateaux property converted from a 170-year old luxury home, and for 2014 was just ranked the Number One Small Hotel in the continental US by Travel + Leisure. It sits next to the Charleston City Market, a tourist must, has 64-period decorated rooms all with 4-poster beds, a wonderful interior garden courtyard for breakfast, and is home to one of the city’s top fine dining venues, the Forbes 4-Star Peninsula Grill. Even smaller is the charming 21-room Wentworth Mansion, as its name suggest, a former mansion, with lots of marble and crystal chandeliers. Every room has separate walk-in shower and jetted tub, they are unusually large, and most have working fireplaces and day beds. This property was rated tops in Charleston by Conde Nast Traveler.
The Kiawah Island Golf Resort, just outside Charleston, is home to the world famous Ocean Course, as... [+]
The one other notable option is to stay outside the city on nearby Kiawah Island, home to the fabulous Forbes 5-Star Sanctuary, the flagship lodging at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort. This vast resort is home to one of the top courses in the world, PGA Championship and Ryder Cup venue The Ocean Course, plus four other courses (Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Fazio), extensive beach and tennis facilities, and more, while the Sanctuary has a Forbes 5-Star spa and 4-Start restaurant, The Ocean Room, for 14 out of a possible max 15 stars. Self-contained Kiawah is simply one of the top golf resorts in the country, and for serious players, often the reason for a trip to Charleston in the first place. Because it is a bit of a drive for going back and forth (45 minutes) a good idea is to bookend a stay here with a weekend in the historic city, or vice versa. There are also two good Tom Fazio courses at the Wild Dunes Resort on Isle of Palms, a bit closer to the city, the waterfront Patriots Point Links near the naval museum, and in all, 20 public courses around the city.
Surprisingly Charleston also wows many visitors with its shopping, since the main retail therapy thoroughfare, King Street, is full of one of kind, carefully curated mom and pop shops with high end goods but without the ubiquitous chain store feel found almost everywhere these days. On the second Sunday of each month King Street is closed to traffic and everyone in town turns out for a festive street fair atmosphere. The area is also famous for its intricately woven sweetgrass, usually in the form of baskets, a highly collectible and disappearing local art form that can be appreciated daily in person while artisans work at the Charleston City Market.
The final piece of the equation is where to eat, and frankly, there are too many good choices for even a week stay. At the fine dining end of the spectrum the focus skews towards New Southern, and besides the aforementioned excellent restaurants in hotels, there is Husk, which was named the best new restaurant in the country when it opened a few years back by Bon Appetit magazine (read more about Husk here at Forbes.com); the Forbes 4-Star Circa 1886 with an emphasis on seafood and local ingredients (catfish with white cheddar grits); the very southern and James Beard award-winning Hominy Grill; the modernist cuisine at McCrady’s; the house made charcuterie and nose to tail eating at Cypress; and High Cotton, with southern flair and great service in beautiful setting but more reasonably priced than its high flying competition.
Frogmore Stew, made with local shrimp, corn and sausage, is one of the iconic dishes of the region's... [+]
That’s the high end. Charleston is also awash in awesome comfort food from delicious southern barbecue (Bessenger’s and Home Team BBQ), southern infused gourmet pizza (EVO), baked goods (Wildflour Bakery), traditional southern/soul (Martha Lou’s, Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit), beer garden meets localvore farmer’s market (Bohemian Bull), and a favorite of mine, just a beautiful and one of a kind spot for the traditional low country oyster roast and endless seafood options, the ultra-atmospheric and casual Bowen’s Island Restaurant.
Have fun!
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