Charleston: Guided tours
Charleston is ideal for walking tours ; the visitor center has details on scores of them. Charleston Strolls (Mon-Sat 9.30am; $16; tel 843/766-2080) leave from the Palmetto Café at the Charleston Place Hotel , 130 Market St, and from Mills House Hotel , 115 Meeting St, thirty minutes later; the Civil War Walking Tour sets out from Mills House Hotel (March-Dec daily 9am; $15; private tours also available throughout year; tel 843/722-7033), Architectural Walking Tours of Charleston run two two-hour tours - the morning tour covering the eighteenth century, the afternoon tour the nineteenth (Mon & Wed-Sat 10am & 2pm; $15; tel 1-800/931-7761); both leave from 173 Meeting St. In the fall, the Preservation Society, 147 King St (tel 1-800/968-8175), organizes candlelit tours, visiting private old homes, with free tea and wafers (Sept & Oct Thurs-Sat 7pm; $35).Much of Charleston's beauty is owed to the black slaves who built it, and there are two good black history tours : Al Miller's one- and two-hour van tours leave from the visitor center, and include material on slave uprisings, the Civil War and the lives of the freed slaves ($10/15; tel 843/762-0051), while Gullah Tours spice their tours with Charleston folktales told in gullah (by appointment only; call for times and prices tel 843/763-7551).
Horse and carriage tours, led by Carolina Polo and Carriage Company ($17, discount given on advance reservations; tel 843/577-6767), leave from the market, providing a lively but leisurely sixty-minute overview of the town. Schooner Pride (mid-March to Oct; $18; tel 843/559-9686) offers two-hour cruises around the harbor in the afternoon and at sunset. Among several trolley tours available, Gray Line of Charleston (tel 843/722-4444 or 1-800/423-0444) offers entertaining and informative 75- and 90-minute Historic Charleston Tours ($15/$17) that depart daily from the visitor center.
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