The Beauty of History.

Charleston, SC – Right down to the Battery, the quiet of Charleston's historic district is punctuated only by the occasional sharp strike of horseshoes against the stone streets. These are, after all, just people's homes.

In the carriages that follow, tour guides provide historical anecdotes in a slow, welcoming drawl as effortlessly as if they are telling you about a family member while sitting on one of the city's many verandas, sipping a cool sweet tea. You get the sense even the horse would even be dignified in carrying-out its business.

Palmetto- lined roads frame colourfully painted homes that boast the impressive gardens and ornate ironwork for which Charleston is known. Outside each, it seems, is a placard describing how the centuries-old edifice was once a market, then a school, a government building, a hotel and how it is now a single-family home. It's rare to find such untainted, uncommercialized beauty in today's cities.

In some ways, it is also hard to imagine this city absorbed the blows of the revolutionary war for three years and that the civil war started here. It is also the birthplace of the submarine.

What a gorgeous city, wrapped in a history text.