1. A city with patterned, outdoor flooring, like this tile in front of the Calhoun Mansion in Charleston, is a fun place to walk.
2. Speaking of the Calhoun Mansion: If you buy the largest house in Charleston of over 24,000 square feet, you’ll probably have to open it up to paying tourists—even allowing them to see your bedroom—to afford the upkeep.
3. You know you’re in a swanky town when the horses that draw tourist carriages wear leather diapers.
4. When a confectioner gives you a free, dark chocolate cashew cluster—and you buy nothing else—you’ve just been treated to true southern hospitality.
5. Dinner at Mercato’s with quiet, live jazz transports you to the other French Quarter.
6. With the likes of Ann Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Gucci, the shops along King Street must generate plenty of thrift shop deals.
7. Charleston understandably boasts of its origin as a haven for religious tolerance: both Unitarian and Jewish congregations are the oldest of their kind in the South—a region not historically open to either one.
8. Leading up to the Civil War, slaves constituted slightly over ½ of Charleston’s population.
9. That Charlestonians were the wealthiest colonists in British North America is not hard to imagine: the concentration of stunning homes and mansions—one after another—in the relatively small historic district is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
10. This kind of wealth requires cheap—or rather, free—labor. It’s the kind of wealth built on the backs of others.
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