The first price I saw for a downtown Charleston hotel on a Friday night in August was $289. Before tax. For one night. I closed the laptop, poured some tea and opened it back up again, because I was not giving up on Charleston that easily.
Our rule this year is under $300 for the whole weekend, gas and food included. One night downtown would have eaten the entire budget before we bought a gallon of gas. So I did what a lot of people who live in Charleston do every day. I looked fifteen minutes up the interstate.
Why North Charleston works
North Charleston sits between the airport and downtown, and it is full of ordinary chain hotels that cater to business travelers and people with early flights. On a summer weekend those business travelers are home, and the rates drop. I found a clean chain hotel off I-26 for $112 a night, which came to $127 with tax. Free parking, free breakfast, and a pool we never got in.
That is $162 less than the downtown room before you count the parking downtown hotels charge on top, which was another $35 to $45 a night at the ones I looked at. For one night, that is real money.
The trade is that you have to drive in. For us that was fine. We are not big-city people, and I would rather drive fifteen minutes on a Saturday morning than pay for the privilege of walking out the door onto King Street.
Parking once and walking all day
Wes works four ten-hour days and my office closes Fridays, so we were on the road by a little after seven Friday morning instead of Friday evening. That is one of the best things about both of us having Fridays free. It is a little over three hours from our house near Maxton.
Friday we checked in early, swam nowhere, ate at a seafood counter in North Charleston and went to bed. Saturday morning we drove into the city before nine, put the CR-V in a public garage near the market and did not touch it again until four in the afternoon. One garage, one fee, $18 for the day.
From there we walked. The City Market, down Meeting Street, out to the Battery with the old houses facing the harbor, through Waterfront Park where Wes put his feet in the fountain like every child in Charleston, and back up King Street, looking in windows and buying nothing. It was about 94 degrees and humid enough to wring out, so we ducked into every shady churchyard we passed. By the end of the day my phone said eleven miles.
A few things I'd tell anybody doing it this way. Get to the garage early, because the spaces near the market fill up by ten on a summer Saturday. Carry water; we brought two frozen bottles from the hotel freezer and they lasted until lunch. Most of what makes Charleston pretty is free to look at: the Battery, the churches, the side streets. And eat the big meal at lunch, when the same restaurants are cheaper.
What it cost
Charleston is about 200 miles from our house, so a round trip with the driving into town was around 410 miles. At 28 or 29 miles to the gallon that's a little over 14 gallons, and gas was about $2.95.
- Hotel in North Charleston, 1 night: $112
- Room tax: $15
- Gas, about 14.3 gallons at $2.95: $42
- Parking garage downtown: $18
- Food: Friday supper $34, Saturday shrimp and grits lunch $46, snacks and drinks $29, for $109
- Total: $296
Four dollars under our line. If I had paid for the downtown room, that same weekend would have been about $480 with parking, and we would have had the same walk and the same lunch.
Wes's only complaint was the heat. On the way home he said, "Next time we come in March," and I wrote that down in the trip notebook, because when he plans ahead I like to hold him to it.
