This morning we rode a leisurely 85 odd miles to Charleston. We rode a single lane freeway – mile after mile of straight road with little traffic. Small American hamlets just straddle the road and most of the properties we passed had plenty of land but were quite run down. The urban sprawl of Charleston started about 20 miles from the sea and wasn’t very attractive. Ultimately we arrived at Mt. Pleasant which is full of ‘affordable’ hotels and very much ‘tourist area’ – and we booked into a hotel. The afternoon was spent visiting the USS Yorktown – a WW2 aircraft carrier that’s been turned into a tourist attrition along with a retired Destroyer, Submarine etc etc. As interesting as it was you can only take so much of Americans flying the flag so we then dissappeared off to find a nice Greek restaurant. (As an aside, we agreed that one reason everything in America is bigger than elsewhere may be linked to the sizes its citizens – I’m sure many weighing scales are often showing south of 150 kg.) Tomorrow we intend to cross from our side of the Cooper river to that of the historic old town by river ferry and spend the day seeing the sights – including the slave market!
