Rebecca Engel
Charleston fits a long weekend better than most American cities. The historic peninsula is barely two miles from end to end, which means you can walk almost all of it, and the handful of places worth leaving it for are a half hour drive at most.
That’s the whole trick to a short trip here. These are seventeen things to do in Charleston South Carolina over a long weekend, split between what you can do on foot downtown and the few spots that actually earn a car.
1. Walk East Bay Street To Rainbow Row
Rainbow Row is thirteen Georgian houses on East Bay Street painted in pinks, blues and yellows, and it’s the most photographed block in the city. The colours only arrived in the 1930s and 40s, when a local family started restoring what were then rundown tenements.
It takes two minutes to walk and there’s nothing to go inside. Treat it as one stop on a longer wander down East Bay rather than a destination on its own.
Come early. By ten the sidewalk opposite is full of people lining up the same photo, and the light is better before that anyway.
2. Sit Under The Oaks At White Point Garden
East Bay runs south to the Battery, where the peninsula ends and two rivers meet the harbour. White Point Garden sits right at the tip, a few acres of live oaks hung with Spanish moss around a bandstand.
There are old cannons along the edges and a raised seawall promenade you can walk beside the water. On a hot afternoon those oaks are the only real shade for blocks, which locals have known for about two hundred years.
The mansions facing the park are private homes, so this one is admired from the sidewalk.
3. Find The Pineapple Fountain At Waterfront Park
The pineapple is the southern symbol for hospitality, and Charleston built a fountain shaped like one in the middle of Waterfront Park. Children wade in it all summer and nobody minds.
The park runs along the Cooper River with a long pier, wooden swings facing the water, and a view across to Mount Pleasant. It’s a good place to end an afternoon rather than start one.
It’s a five minute walk from the City Market, so the two pair naturally into the same hour.
4. Cut Through Stoll’s Alley And Philadelphia Alley
The peninsula is threaded with narrow alleys that most visitors walk straight past. Stoll’s Alley is barely wide enough for one person in places, brick walled and hung with ferns.
Philadelphia Alley is longer and quieter, a cobbled cut through that was known as Duellers’ Alley in the eighteenth century for the obvious reason.
Neither takes more than a few minutes and both are free. They’re the closest thing Charleston has to a secret, and they sit right in the middle of the busiest part of town.
5. Browse The Charleston City Market
The City Market runs four blocks down the middle of Market Street under a row of long open sheds, and it has been trading since the 1790s.
Much of it is what you’d expect from a market this famous, but the thing to look for is sweetgrass baskets. Gullah Geechee women have been weaving them here for generations using a technique carried over from West Africa, and a good one takes days to make and is priced accordingly.
The sheds are covered but open sided, which makes this the reliable rainy morning stop.
6. Shop Your Way Up King Street
King Street is the main shopping spine and it changes character as you go. The lower end is antiques, the middle is fashion, and the upper end is where most of the newer restaurants have landed.
It’s about a mile end to end and entirely walkable. On the second Sunday of most months the city closes the lower stretch to cars and it fills with tables and people instead.
Even if you buy nothing it’s the best street in the city for simply walking.
7. Tour The Aiken Rhett House
Most Charleston house museums are restored to a shine. The Aiken Rhett House deliberately isn’t, and that’s exactly why it’s the one to pick.
The 1820 house has been preserved rather than restored, so the wallpaper peels and the paint is original. The work yard behind it still holds the kitchen building, the stables and the quarters where the enslaved people who ran the household lived, which almost no other house in the city has kept intact.
The audio tour runs about an hour and it doesn’t flinch from any of it.
8. Eat Shrimp And Grits At Poogan’s Porch
Shrimp and grits began as a Lowcountry fisherman’s breakfast and became the dish the whole city is known for. Every restaurant here has a version and most of them are good.
Poogan’s Porch does a classic one in a Victorian house on Queen Street with a wraparound porch. It’s been open since 1976 and it’s named after the dog who used to live on that porch.
Book ahead. Walking in on a Saturday night is optimistic.
9. Line Up At Lewis Barbecue
Charleston is not a barbecue town by heritage, which makes Lewis Barbecue a strange and very good thing for it to have. It’s Central Texas style, run by a pitmaster who moved east, and it’s the best plate of meat in the city by some distance.
Get the brisket. Get a beef rib if there are two of you and you’re hungry. The hot guts sausage is what locals order without thinking about it.
There’s a line most days and a big yard out back to eat in. It sits on the upper peninsula, about a twenty minute walk from the top of King Street.
10. Take A Sunset Sail Out Of Charleston Harbor
The city was built to be seen from the water, and the skyline of church steeples still reads the way it did two hundred years ago, because nothing downtown is allowed to rise above them.
Sunset sails leave from the marina and take about two hours, out past Fort Sumter and back with the light going gold behind the peninsula.
Book at least a day ahead. In spring and autumn the good boats sell out.
11. Walk The Ravenel Bridge At Golden Hour
The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge crosses the Cooper River to Mount Pleasant and carries a separate lane for walking and cycling the whole way over. It’s about two and a half miles each direction.
You don’t have to do all of it. Going as far as the first tower puts you high above the harbour with the whole peninsula laid out behind you, which is where most people stop anyway.
Late afternoon is the time for it. There’s no shade at any point, so the middle of a summer day is genuinely unpleasant.
12. Do The Saturday Market At Marion Square
From spring through late autumn the farmers market takes over Marion Square on Saturday mornings. It’s produce, flowers, prepared breakfast and a lot of local crowd.
It’s the one thing on this list where you’ll be surrounded by people who live here rather than people visiting, which changes the feel of a morning completely.
Go for breakfast rather than lunch. It opens at eight and the best stalls thin out well before noon. It doesn’t run in the depths of winter, so check before you build a Saturday around it.
13. Ride The Ferry Out To Fort Sumter
The Civil War started here. The first shots were fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, and the only way to reach the island is a ferry that leaves from Liberty Square downtown.
The whole trip runs about two and a quarter hours with an hour on the island itself. The fort is mostly ruins and rebuilt walls now, and the rangers who talk you through it are very good.
Book in advance in summer. There are only a few sailings a day and they fill.
14. Stand Under The Angel Oak On Johns Island
The Angel Oak is a live oak somewhere between four and five hundred years old, sixty five feet tall, with branches that run so far sideways they rest on the ground and come back up again.
It stands on Johns Island about forty minutes from downtown and it costs nothing to visit. There’s a small park around it and almost nothing else, which is the right amount of infrastructure for a tree.
Fifteen minutes there is plenty. It’s still worth the drive.
15. Walk McLeod Plantation Historic Site
There are several plantation sites around Charleston and they take very different approaches to what happened on them. McLeod on James Island is the one built around the people who were enslaved there rather than around the house and the gardens.
The row of cabins still stands, and the guided tour follows the Gullah Geechee community that lived and worked on the site through emancipation and long after it. It isn’t a pleasant visit and it isn’t meant to be one.
It’s ten minutes from downtown and takes about ninety minutes. If you only have time for one plantation site on a short trip, make it this one.
16. Watch The Shrimp Boats At Shem Creek
Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant is where the shrimp fleet ties up, and a long public boardwalk runs out over the marsh alongside it.
Dolphins come up the creek regularly and you can usually watch them from the boardwalk without paying for anything at all. The restaurants along the water are fine, but the boardwalk is the actual point.
It’s fifteen minutes over the bridge from downtown. Best at the end of the day, when the boats come back in.
17. Spend An Afternoon On Sullivan’s Island
Sullivan’s Island is the closest good beach to the city, about twenty five minutes out past Mount Pleasant. It’s residential, there are no high rises and no boardwalk, and that’s precisely why it beats the busier options.
Parking is on the street and free but limited, so arrive in the morning rather than at two in the afternoon. A short strip of restaurants sits a block back from the sand.
Fort Moultrie holds the western end of the island if you want a bit of history with the beach.
What To Skip In Charleston South Carolina On A Short Trip
Boone Hall and Magnolia are the plantation sites most visitors default to, and on a weekend each one eats half a day for a version of the story McLeod tells better and much closer in.
The horse drawn carriage tours are everywhere and they’re perfectly pleasant, but they cover ground you can cover on foot in a city this small, and the time costs more than the ride is worth.
Folly Beach is the other one to let go. It’s a good beach with a real surf town attached, but it’s further out than Sullivan’s and the parking is worse, and one beach is enough on a three day trip.
Ghost tours are a matter of taste. Charleston runs a lot of them and runs them well, so pick one if that appeals, but they go at night and they’ll cost you an evening you could have spent eating.
Final Thoughts
A long weekend is genuinely enough here, which isn’t true of many places worth flying to. The historic core is small, most of the best things to do in Charleston South Carolina sit within walking distance of one another, and the rest are a short drive out.
The mistake is trying to fit the peninsula, the plantations and the beaches into the same three days. Give the downtown two days, add one thing from out of town, and let the rest go.
Book the restaurants before you arrive and walk everything else. Charleston rewards being unhurried far more than it rewards being thorough.
