I'm planning a day trip to Charleston, SC for this Saturday.  Anybody got any good recommendations for places to check out, eat at, see, etc?

Checkout the Battery, Downtown/King Street, Farmers Market (all are in the downtown area). Carolina's (downtown as well) has some great southern food. If you want a beach try the Isle of Palms. Some of the area plantations might be interesting if you are into that sort of thing. There is also Fort Sumter (civil war) but meh.

A good restaurant in Charleston is S.N.O.B (stands for Slightly North of Broad).  It's an upscale take on the traditional low country food, but it is a little expensive. 

 

Definitely check out King Street, and just leave some time for exploring the city. It's a beautiful city and is perfect for just walking around.

I lived there for several years, give me a call

Folley Beach is nice.  Good spots for lunch.... IIRC, there is a really good topas bar there and some good spots for seafood.  To be clear, I have not been there in years.

Other than King Street...which streets should I hit up?  I'm trying to create a walking tour map for myself so that I for sure see everything that there is to see.

I'm planning a day trip to Charleston, SC for this Saturday. Anybody got any good recommendations for places to check out, eat at, see, etc?

 

Go in January. ;)

The Charleston Farmers Market is located in Marion Square, between King and Meeting and Calhoun Streets in the Center of the historic downtown area (see map top center).

 

The Battery is the best part of Charleston IMO. Walk down Meeting St or E. Bay St to the end to White Point Gardens (corner E/S Battery St – see bottom center on map). There are historic homes all along S. Battery St and the streets that intersect it.

 

Downtown is very walkable; just walk along King, Meeting, Church streets you will see many sights along the way. Although I’m bored with it from spending a lot of time there, I don’t think you will be disappointed.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_Park_(Charleston)

http://www.charlestonsfinest.com/sc/places.htm

 

Map of historic Downtown:

http://www.discovercharleston.com/maps/images/HistoricCharleston.pdf

^That's very helpful, thanks!

Actually my wife and I honeymooned there.  We didn't have much money at the time, so we figureed a couple days at Kihawa on the Beach and a few days in Charleston.  We wouldn't take any of it back.  Charleston turned out to be one of my favorite cities ever visited in the US...possibly my favorite.  That is when I learned, a skyline is not what makes a city great.  I think you will have a blast.  I'll have to pull out the photos and see some of the places we went as they are escaping my mind right now. 

Actually I was thinking about the City Market and not the Farmers Market but Marion Square/Farmers Market is worth checking out being you will be there on a Saturday. The City Market itself isn't that exciting but the streets surrounding it contain some great old buildings. See the PDF link above for the location of the City Market.

 

Here is a good site that lists the locations with the addresses of some of Charleston's most noteworthy architecture (Homes and Neighborhoods):

 

http://www.locountry.com/charleston_sc_architecture.html

The trip to Charleston was fantastic.  The rain stopped just as we were ready to get out of the car and the day was gorgeous from then on.  We parked down on S. Battery and began our walking path there.  Here is the route we took:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=108249158406108038803.00045511356abb69f4e7a&ll=32.776559,-79.935236&spn=0.026521,0.060081&z=15

 

We got to see White Point Gardens, Rainbow Row, St. Michaels, Broad Street, King Street, Meeting Street, all the fabulous shopping, Marion Square Park, College of Charleston (my favorite part), couple other old churches/cemeteries, and Legare Street (amazing homes here).

 

From there we drove over to Folly Beach and enjoyed the ocean for about 45min to an hour.  Overall it was a great trip and had no where near enough time to see/do everything that I wanted.  I hope to make it back sometime in January/February '09.  Gorgeous place...at least 5x better than Savannah.

I spent about a month in Charleston last fall for work and thought it was a nice little city. There were so many excellent seafood places I wouldn't know where to get started, but after a few weeks I needed a break from seafood and on a tip from locals found a steakhouse called Brecks on Rivers Ave in Goose Creek that looked like a dive but had some outrageously good food at great prices. Oh and I can't forget Matthews sports bar in Mt Pleasant, we found it accidentally, but its the home of the Charleston chapter of the Browns backers.

no one calls it white point gardens

Too bad you didn't wait a few weeks. You would have got to see downtown covered with cadets from The Citadel. When I was a cadet I was pretty sure that everybody hated us because there were so many of us.