Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Apr 24, 2007

Gran' Snarfari

Filed in BX Convention 2007

Thursday was the day I’d promised myself a gran' snarfari, and boy did I ever. I walked through the rather seedy area where the hostel was at round about eight in the morning, then headed down King Street with the sun in my eyes. It started off as almost derelict, slowly transforming as urban renewal kicked into place, then further along became full-blown downtown with upscale boutiques and department stores such as Saks. Right at the end is a pretty, green park and then the river–one of two rivers which combine to form the Atlantic. ;-)

And oh, the plaques. Every building appeared to have something–I found 94 just on this leg of the trip. I walked twice as far as that which is marked on the maps–each time there was a plaque I needed one picture of the building from across the street, and another of the plaque from close by. Presumably when I download my GPS data it will look like a drunken spider sprawled its way down the streets. I stopped once in a bagel shop for breakfast–my banana had dissolved in transit, alas–and later for coffee. I had too much coffee and could barely keep in a straight line, but the jetlag and exhaustion were kicking in and it was the only way I could keep going.

Towards the end I bumped into madame_urushiol, jillville and greedyreader who were shopping and photographing their way around town. We wandered together awhile but when it became clear that they were in shopping mode I excused myself as I was tired out and footsore and needed to keep going. Eventually I gave up and caught a taxi, which took an hour. Not good. Charleston Yellow Cab appears to operate on a “when we feel like it” kind of basis.

Back at the hostel, I took a shower, bruised my leg on the sink–it was cramped in their bathroom–and experienced disgust at the filthy floor. Then I walked to the hotel and joined in for the reception, several hours' worth of chat, cake, laughter, meeting people for the first or the fourth time, and joyfulness. Followed by several more of the same in the hotel bar. ;-)