Charleston

This week was Spring Break at Duke. Even though Adam and I both have a lot of deadlines coming up soon, we decided that this would be one of our last chances to take our long-delayed trip to Charleston, South Carolina before babies started to make our world travels more complicated. (We intended to go to Charleston two summers ago, but I got pneumonia at the last minute. Yep, it was awful.) The weather was perfect (a balmy 75 degrees with low humidity), our hotel was fantastic (the French Quarter Inn, which we highly recommend to everyone), and the food was absolutely amazing everywhere we went which is, as you all know, the most important thing to a pregnant woman. Adam next to a giant Magnolia tree at the Nathaniel Russell House.One of our now-famous self-portraits. (Thanks heavens Adam has such long arms or we'd have virtually no photos together!)Adam and I visiting Drayton Hall, the oldest standing plantation mansion in the United States (ca. 1740). It was the only plantation on the Ashley River not to be torched by Sherman on his infamous march south because the family hung yellow flags at the end of the drive and had their slaves tell the Union soldiers that the house was being used as a hospital for people with yellow fever. Very sneaky!Our last stop was at the gardens at Middleton Place, the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States (ca. 1750). Although the plantation house was burned by Sherman and rebuilt in a less-than-impressive manner, the grounds are astounding. It took one hundred slaves ten years of hard labor to the clear land, dig the numerous ponds, plant the hundreds of flowers and grasses, and create the paths and smaller gardens that make this estate so astounding.Ariel (and 17-week baby belly) in the gardens.And last but not least, some really cute little turtles hanging out in the rice mill pond.