Did you do a double-take? No, those aren’t my boys. My friend Whitney is guest posting for me today for my Things To Do With Kids Series. Charleston is one of my favorite places to visit. I’ve been twice, but never with kids. My favorite thing to do was the carriage ride. I am always a sucker for a carriage city tour.

Whitney was visiting family and only spent a day there. She chose to do the Charleston Water Taxi and Patriot’s Point — both sound like fantastic activities to do with kids. With that, I’ll let Whitney take it away.

Things To Do With Kids: Charleston Water Taxi & Patriots Point

Charleston Water Taxi

The Charleston Water Taxi is a ferry service that makes four stops in the Charleston Harbor. It’s $10 for an all day ticket {kids under 3 are free} and you can hop on and off. You could just pay and ride on it for the dolphin sightseeing (we saw several while on!) and several folks were doing just that, but we got on at the Charleston Maritime Center and road it to the next stop, Patriots Point. The entire loop is about an hour.

Visit the Charleston Water Taxi website for the schedule of times and pickup spots.

Patriot’s Point

Patriots Point is a US Naval and Maritme Center. It is the home to the USS Laffey which is a destroyer from WWII. We spent a good hour on this ship when we first arrived. It has a rich history including a surprise attack when it was in Japan – one of the most aggressive kamikaze attacks in all of naval history. Some 30+ naval officers died and many more were injured. You can see some amazing pieces of history inside this ship including soldiers’ barracks, the sick bay, the captains quarters and more.

After we left the USS Laffey, we boarded the USS Yorktown. It is an aircraft carrier also from WWII and it is ginormous. I mean, I had no idea how large an aircraft carrier was but this thing housed a museum, several airplanes, a cafeteria and more. I would say this is the main part Patriots Point and you could truly spend hours inside.

Because it was so hot, we hit the Medal of Honor Museum first, which was air-conditioned. One of the nice volunteers pointed us in the direction. (Most of the volunteers seemed to be retired navy guys – they were so helpful and passionate about their history, I highly recommend chatting with any of these great older guys if you plan on a visit – they are full of first-hand knowledge and are often wearing the hat of whatever ship they sailed on.)

Outside of the museum in the “main” part of the Yorktown, there were about a dozen planes you could walk by and the boys were able to get inside of some to check them out.  Here’s one of my kids “flying”:

Upstairs, you can go out onto the top of the ship and see more airplanes.  It was hotter than Hades when we were there so only my youngest and my husband went up but they said it was really cool.

There’s also a submarine you can board and explore too but we didn’t have time. Just for a point of reference, we were there for about 3 hours so I think you can easily spend anywhere from 2-5 hours at Patriots Point depending on the level of interest in your party! We also got a great discount as it was Father’s Day and my hubby got in for free but they give a senior discount as well as military one.

So that’s it for our day in Charleston. We stayed at the Marriott in Downtown Charleston and thought it was a great location and nice hotel.  It had a small pool my kids swam in the one afternoon.

Whitney Wingerd is a blogger, mother and wife living outside of Philadelphia. (Go Eagles!) She’s been blogging at Mommies with Style since 2004. She loves running, fitness, fashion and beauty and she’ll never turn down a glass of wine. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

 

 

 

For more family travel, see all of my Things To Do With Kids posts.