'A stranger's just a friend you haven't met'

I think South Carolina may be the most underrated state in the union, since people hardly ever talk about it and it's really good. I guess that's the essence of being underrated. Charleston is an absolutely beautiful place, the archetypal Southern port city (apparently it was once the wealthiest settlement in the colonies), filled with gorgeous old antebellum houses. Well, I say old. It's funny, when tour guides proudly announce that the building we're standing in or next to remains as it was in the mid-19th century, any Americans with us murmur to each other in astonishment. It's a bit different at home.

We spent a couple of days in Charleston more or less just wandering around the historic district and the waterfront, soaking up the tropical sunshine. Horse-drawn carriage tours are pretty popular here, which makes it curiously reminiscent of Sark. Everybody's so friendly. Our misguided belief that we were blending in, fostered in cosmopolitan New York and Boston, has been well and truly put to bed by our encounters with locals here, who can scarcely believe the accent. In a good way though. They're probably also given a clue by what I look like. If you were casting the role of 'A Tourist' in a movie, you'd want someone to look exactly like I do: cricket hat, crocs, camera.

We're in Savannah, Georgia now, which is similarly hot, green and Southern. It's a bit like 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. Charleston and Savannah were, respectively, the cradle and the denouement of the the Civil War - the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour, and General Sherman famously spared Savannah from the retributive wrath of the Union forces because he considered it to be too beautiful to burn. Mark Twain once wrote that 'the Civil War in the South is like Ano Domini elsewhere, they date everything from it', and supposedly the rift is still keenly felt here, but I haven't noticed anything as yet.

Tonight we're taking the opportunity to watch some American TV, which is just as ridiculous as ever. Amusing adverts (sorry, commercials) we've seen include somebody urging us to 'turn in your old scraps of gold gathering dust', the slogan 'because they taste good' for Cheerios, and a hand cream that pledges to 'defeat dry skin'. Sounds epic. The other day, Scarlett was watching a programme called 'Last Cake Standing', which was exactly what it sounds like.

Tomorrow we're going to explore Savannah a bit more, before permanently leaving the Eastern seaboard behind, and turning inland towards Atlanta on Sunday. This is, quite literally, the place to stay in the loop.

Reeeed hot!

- Adam