We started the day in beautiful downtown South Charleston at a diner called the Farm Table, which was nothing particularly special, but was more than adequate. We walked around the area a bit and then hit the car for the grand loop of South Charleston, Dunbar, and Charleston proper.
I was excited to find a smelly old Fas Chek supermarket in Dunbar that had opened as a Kroger more than fifty years before, and we were both excited to find what is apparently the West Side Urban Renewal Area, a streetcar strip with amazing old commercial buildings (most of them vacant) and also the Charleston Department Store. We liked the Charleston Department Store. It had pants in my size, which is an unsual and beautiful thing since most “big and tall” stores have the big part covered, but not the tall part, under the assumption that there are no tall fat people. I also found an abandoned pharmacy from the 1930s that I really want to live in.
Afterward, we made our way to downtown Charleston, where we strolled about and had cheap pizza for lunch.
The evening brought a trip to the more far-flung western suburbs of Nitro and St. Albans, where we found a Tim Horton’s for Mark and something resembling a Mexican restaurant for both of us.