Walk Charleston with Sue
Bennett – Tour with a Native Charlestonian
My spouse and I booked a private walking tour with Sue
Bennett of Walk Charleston on a Friday morning in mid-November 2016. We found
Sue’s website online (www dot WalkCharleston dot com) and contacted her via
email. Miss Sue responded promptly, and she graciously agreed to be our guide.
(Please note that WalkCharleston is NOT the same organization as
CharlestonWalks.)
Sue Bennett offers both public/group and private tours. Her
group tours generally occur on Fridays at 1:00 pm and on Saturdays at 10:00 am;
inquire about private tours at other times. She charges approximately $22 per
person (payable in cash or personal check) for a 2- to 3-hour tour. The cost
for a private tour is approximately $50 per hour, which was well worth the
additional cost. We passed two large public tour groups as we walked around the
Historic District (Charleston permits groups as large as 20 people), and it
seemed difficult for the guide to keep the guests together on the narrow
cobblestone streets, and challenging for the guests to hear the guide’s
commentary. “Splurge” and spend a little more to book the private tour.
Although Miss Sue has a “day job” during the
week as an office manager, she guides in her “free” time. She became a licensed guide in
2004; the National Association for Interpretation (NAI) considers her a certified
interpretive guide (CIG). Miss
Sue offers a unique perspective on the city because she is a native
Charlestonian who was born, educated, and resides in the city. Not only does
she lead walking tours through Historic Charleston, but she also lectures, attends
classes on local Charleston history, and volunteers for the Preservation
Society of Charleston. She aspires to expand walk-and-learn opportunities for
students in area schools so that every student can embrace his or her rich
Charleston heritage.
We spent about
three hours with Miss Sue. She agreed to meet us at our hotel at 10:30 am, and
we strolled together through the Historic District for the next few hours,
pausing to admire architecture, to hear history, and to take photographs. On
our tour, we passed the City Market, Dock Street Theatre, Slave Mart Museum,
Gibbes Museum of Art, Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, Pink House (the second
oldest structure in the city), Powder Magazine, City Hall, Charleston County Courthouse,
and other structures. We visited a few of the Holy City’s churches (including
the French Protestant Huguenot Church, Unitarian Universal Church and graveyard,
Circular Congregational Church and graveyard, and Cathedral of St John the
Baptist). One thing we will always remember from our tour: the difference
between a graveyard (which is attached to a church) and a cemetery (which is
not); we also heard interesting information about private gardens, earthquake
bolts, fire mark plaques, and Carolopolis Awards. We learned about some of the
more famous residences (Rainbow Row, Calhoun Mansion, Two Meeting Street Inn, home
of Porgy and Bess writer DuBose Heyward), and we walked along Battery. Sue
arranged our tour route so that we ended near where we planned to have lunch. (As
we are writing this review, we feel terribly impolite for failing to invite her
to join us to dine!) She advised us to bring along bottled water, and we
stopped partway through our tour so that we could use the public bathroom at
the art museum. Sue had also planned for us to stop and enjoy a cold beverage
at a local café/bar (called Blind Tiger, which has a hidden outdoor rear patio)
during our tour, but we asked too many questions and ran out of time.
We loved our private walking tour with Sue Bennett of Walk
Charleston! In fact, we found her tour so enlightening and valuable that we wished
we had booked her for a second tour on a subsequent day. Sue is a thoughtful, informative, and
well-prepared guide!
