Charleston

In town, this is the hotel we like. It's a 1960s federal building on Marion Square, redone as a 155-room hotel with a spa, a brass-topped bar in the lobby called the Living Room, and the Citrus Club on the roof for a drink with a view over the city. King Street is across the square, and most of the old town is walkable from the door. The hotel also has bikes for guests and a house car.

Great for: couples, a weekend of walking to dinner.

A 41-room hotel on State Street with an Art Deco look, from the crystal chandelier in the lobby to the marble bathrooms. Every room comes with a butler, and the bar off the lobby has the feel of a 1920s speakeasy. It's a block from the City Market, and East Bay Street and Waterfront Park are a few minutes' walk.

Great for: couples, a weekend in town.

An 1886 house in Harleston Village with 21 rooms, each a different size and shape. Climb up to the cupola on the roof for a view across the city. The old carriage house holds the spa and Circa 1886, the hotel's restaurant, which does tasting menus as well as à la carte. Colonial Lake and King Street are both a short walk away.

Great for: couples, special occasions.

An adults-only inn of about ten rooms across a group of 1860s houses on Cannon Street, with porches, a garden courtyard and a small saltwater pool. There's no restaurant, but breakfast and an evening wine and cheese hour are included, and there are bikes for getting around. Babas on Cannon is at the other end of the same street.

Great for: couples. Adults only.

A newer hotel right on the water next to Waterfront Park, with its own marina, a spa and a rooftop infinity pool over the harbor for hotel guests. Many of the 191 rooms have balconies looking out over the harbor or the city. The main restaurant, The Crossing, does Mediterranean food with local ingredients.

Great for: families, couples who want a pool and a harbor view.

Our pick for a quieter stay. It's an inn with seven rooms above a tavern, in an 1800s building in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant, a neighborhood of old houses and live oaks on the harbor across the Cooper River. The restaurant downstairs comes from the team behind Basic Kitchen, and breakfast is included. Downtown is about fifteen minutes by car over the Ravenel Bridge, and Sullivan's Island is closer still. The rooms are on the upper floors, up the stairs.

Great for: couples, a beach-and-town trip. The rooms are upstairs and not accessible.

Our pick for larger family groups. A more authentic old Charleston house with four bedrooms, just a block from the Battery. We stayed here as a family for Christmas 2022. You can book it on Vrbo. Street parking out front is limited to two hours, so plan on a garage for any extra cars.

Good for: big family groups who want a whole house.

For coffee and a pastry, this is where we always end up. It's a small cafe from the owners of Harbinger, in a former gallery on Queen Street with brick walls and plants, and it's very cute. The biscuit with whipped butter and jam is our go-to order. They also do quiche and sandwiches at lunch.

Good for: coffee and a pastry on a morning walk.

Great coffee. This is the original shop of a local roaster that now has a few around town, in Harleston Village a couple of blocks off King Street, with a small case of pastries. Colonial Lake is a short walk away if you want to take your coffee with you.

Good for: coffee on a morning walk.

Our pick for a sit-down breakfast or brunch. The grits are milled on site (there's a small mill in the front window), and one of the owners is Greg Johnsman of Geechie Boy grits on Edisto Island. Breakfast is served all day, with biscuits, waffles and plenty of grits dishes.

Good for: a proper breakfast, brunch with a group.

A cafe and small market with fresh pastries and Onyx coffee. It's at the top of King Street, so from the lower part of town it's an Uber ride uptown rather than a walk, but it's worth the trip.

Good for: coffee and a pastry, picking up lunch to take away.

A small cafe on Cannon Street that does coffee, toast, soft eggs and quiche in the morning, then spritzes and negronis in the evening. Get the breakfast tacos. If you're staying at 86 Cannon, this is the easy stop for a quick coffee and a bite.

Good for: a quick breakfast, or an early evening drink.

A corner store that has been on this residential block since 1922 and now does crepes, sweet and savory, along with pressed sandwiches and smoothies. There are a few tables and a red bench on the sidewalk out front.

Good for: breakfast or lunch with kids.

A walk-up coffee window in a little blue brick cottage on Simmons Street, with a few tables outside. If you're staying at Post House, stroll over in the morning. It's a short walk through the Old Village.

Good for: morning coffee in the Old Village.

A tasting menu built around South Carolina ingredients, with a choice of two dishes for each course. It picked up a Michelin star in the first South guide in late 2025. There's an eight-seat counter in front of the open kitchen if you'd like to watch the cooks.

Good for: a special dinner for two. Book on Resy.

A small neighborhood restaurant with a changing menu of shareable plates built around Lowcountry ingredients. It earned a Michelin star in late 2025 and tables are hard to get, so book well ahead or try for one of the few bar seats kept for walk-ins.

Our pick for a more special date night. A tiny house with a menu written by hand each day: two appetizers, two entrées and two desserts, drawing on southern France, northern Italy and northern Spain. Closed Mondays.

Good for: date night.

What we'd say is the best fish restaurant in town. The menu is built around sustainably caught local seafood and changes with whatever is freshest, in a historic house on Broad Street.

Good for: seafood, a dinner out downtown.

A small, old-school Italian place. It feels like a classic red-sauce joint, only far more elevated, and a little clubby (the cozy kind, not the dancing kind). Order at least one of the crudos.

Good for: dinner for two, a night out on King Street.

Oysters and fried chicken in a converted body shop at the top of King Street. Order both. The chicken is brined in buttermilk and seasoned with Old Bay. The kitchen stays open through the afternoon, so it works for a late lunch too.

Good for: groups, families, an easy dinner.

For something a little different. Asian cooking from Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and China in an old gas station, on a menu that rotates. Okonomiyaki and shrimp toast are regulars. It gets busy, so go early.

A brewery and a good casual option for a group, with lots of outdoor seating. Most people still know it as Edmund's Oast; it was recently renamed Edmund's Original.

Good for: groups, a casual dinner outside.

Chinese-American cooking from Shuai and Corrie Wang, who started with the Short Grain food truck. The menu mixes dumplings and karaage fried chicken with dishes like reuben fried rice, ordered family-style. It's a twenty-minute drive north of downtown, and closed early in the week, so check before you go.

Good for: groups, a night out of downtown.

Ice cream made from scratch with local ingredients, a few steps off King Street, with dairy and vegan flavors. Try the key lime pie.

Good for: after dinner, and with kids.

Whole-hog barbecue from pitmaster Rodney Scott, cooked slowly over wood coals. Get the pulled pork with his vinegar and pepper sauce, and save room for the banana pudding.

Central Texas barbecue from pitmaster John Lewis, with brisket sliced to order and sold by the pound, and beef ribs on weekends. His Mexican spinoff, Rancho Lewis on upper King Street, does the border food he grew up on in El Paso, with fresh tortillas and margaritas.

The newcomer, and the one spot here we haven't been to yet. Pitmaster Hector Garate cooks Texas-style barbecue with Puerto Rican influences, and his smoked beef cheeks have made national best-of lists.

A great stop for sandwiches on your way out to Sullivan's Island. Basically all their sandwiches are excellent. You can't really go wrong.

Good for: picking up lunch for the beach.

Italian food with a lot of local seafood, on the main street of Sullivan's Island a few blocks from the beach. Wood-fired pizza and pasta, and the griddled octopus is a regular on the menu. It's an easy lunch on a beach day.

Good for: families, lunch after the beach.

Great ice cream and gelato in the space downstairs from the Obstinate Daughter.

Good for: dessert after the beach.

Two places that share a 1930s cottage and its shady courtyard in the Old Village. Vintage does coffee, toast and breakfast sandwiches in the morning. Coastal Crust started as a food truck and makes wood-fired pizza in the courtyard in the evening, mostly at outdoor tables. There's an old truck in the back that kids can climb on.

Good for: families. A short walk from Post House.

An outdoor bar on Folly Beach with picnic tables, a tiny stage and a short menu of tacos and bowls. There's live music most nights, and it's a short walk from the sand.

Good for: a casual evening on a Folly Beach day.

If you're headed to the beach, you can't do better than Sullivan's Island. It's mostly houses, with no hotels or high-rises on the sand, and paths at the end of the streets lead over the dunes to the beach. There are a few restaurants on Middle Street (see The Obstinate Daughter) and Fort Moultrie at the western end. Parking is on the street with all four wheels off the pavement, and on a sunny weekend it fills up early.

Good for: families, a beach day with lunch on Middle Street.

An easy walk along the water. Start at Waterfront Park on the Cooper River, where kids splash in the Pineapple Fountain, then head south along the water to the Battery, the old seawall at the tip of the peninsula. It ends at White Point Garden, a park of live oaks and old cannons, with the big houses of South of Broad behind you. Go early or late in the day in summer, when there's a breeze off the harbor.

Good for: families, a first walk around town.

Spend an afternoon just taking in the architecture and the historic mansions and homes of the South of Broad neighborhood. Walk lower King, Tradd, Orange, Legare, Meeting and Water streets, and along the Battery. A few of the homes are now museums you can drop into, like the Nathaniel Russell House on Meeting Street and the Edmondston-Alston House on the Battery. You can also explore the area on a rental bike, but skip the horse-drawn carriage rides. There's a campaign to end them because of the strain they put on the horses, especially in the summer heat.

Good for: an afternoon on foot or by bike.

A tidal pond in Harleston Village with a path around it, lined with old houses and palmettos. It's a quiet loop away from the tourist streets, a few blocks from Second State Coffee. At Christmas there's a tree in the middle of the water.

Good for: a morning walk with a coffee.

A really quiet but beautiful historic neighborhood across the river. We almost bought a house here, before realizing we had to head back to Boston. Walk down Pitt Street to Pickett Park, which reaches out over the marsh toward Sullivan's Island, then over to Alhambra Hall and its lawn on the harbor. If you're wondering why there are tourist teenagers walking around an otherwise quiet spot, it's the filming location for the Netflix show Outer Banks.

Good for: a slow walk. Right on the doorstep if you stay at Post House.

Excellent. A World War II aircraft carrier, now a museum ship at Patriots Point, that you can explore from the flight deck down.

Good for: families, history lovers.

Excellent. A ferry ride out into the harbor to the fort where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Boats leave from Liberty Square downtown and from Patriots Point.

Good for: families, history lovers.

Rent a kayak or paddleboard from Coastal Expeditions on Shem Creek and paddle out past the shrimp boats and the restaurant decks into the marsh. Go with the tide rather than against it, and keep to the edges, since the creek is busy with boats on weekends.

Good for: families with older kids, a morning on the water.