Gone with the Wind

The Joujon family left us :-( and the holidays are over!!!

Bye, Bye les Joujon

Anyhow, we are back in BAU (Business as Usual) mode, with home schooling in the morning and discovery of wild life in the afternoon (actually writing from Myakka River state park, surrounded by alligators!). Looking forward for the election later this evening (6 November 2012).

That said we have a lot of catch-up to do since last post. So where were we? After a nice weekend in the festive town of Surf City, time to move back to ‘more serious stuff’, and continue our historical tour of the confederated states.

Next stops: the Boone Hall plantation, Charleston and Savannah.           

Boone Hall (South Carolina), located a few miles north of Charleston is one of the oldest working plantations. 

The land was given to John Boone by the king of England, over 320 years ago, in exchange of producing more exotic stuff that would not be found in Great Britain such as cotton, indigo… And like any other plantation, ‘slaves’ would do the hard work.

But what this plantation is most known for are the red bricks it produced in the 1800 which cover a lot of the state buildings and private houses in Charleston and the surroundings.

The slaves cabins and the house 'entrepot'. 

Reading in our guide, we were let to believe this plantation was used to shoot Gone With the Wind. Not quite the reality, since its actually100% Hollywood made! But hey, we you can still easily imagine Scarlett running in the middle of the Virginia Oaks!!!

Moving on to Charleston (South Carolina), a stunning town with beautiful mansions and a history nearly as old as Boston. Its habitants fought bravely for their independence and were bombarded for over 500 days!!! 

South Carolina was amongst the first states to join the independence, which was ratified in the City Hall (left picture).


The town used to have ‘fortification’ and reminded us of a small town in Brittany, at the time of ‘La Gaule’ where Asterix and Obelix used to live :-) That said, the houses in Charleston seem much more comfortable!!!!!

But Charleston also played a significant role in the civil war, as Fort Sumter (in the bay of Charleston) is where the confederated army first opened fire on the union, hence allowing Lincoln to raise an army to combat the separatist states.

FORT SUMTER

It seems there is still a bit of nostalgie of the 'old' times! 

Final pit stop before heading to Florida: Savannah (Georgia). If the mansions can be quite similar to the ones found in Charleston, the city design is very different. 






Much bigger streets, with squares nearly every block flourished with Oak trees bringing shade and air in this more southerner city.  The French army played an important role during the independence; Lafayette has his own square and we noticed French people are more than welcomed. 

We know, Cup cakes are not really French stile...

THE END