Georgetown or Charleston? Why the Smaller Harbor Town Wins a Weekend

Charleston is wonderful. It is also crowded, expensive, and increasingly difficult to experience without a reservation made six weeks in advance.

An hour up the coast sits Georgetown, and USA Today named it America’s Best Coastal Small Town — pointing out something that surprises most visitors: Georgetown has more 200-year-old homes than Charleston does. More than 250 historic homes stand in and around the downtown district, with more than 60 on the National Register of Historic Places.

Here is the honest comparison.

Charleston wins on restaurant depth, nightlife, hotel selection and sheer volume of things to do. If you want a dozen nationally reviewed restaurants within walking distance, go to Charleston.

Georgetown wins on everything that gets harder as a destination gets popular. You can park. You can walk into a restaurant on a Saturday. You can stand in front of a house built in the 1700s without twelve other people waiting for the same photograph. The shops on Front Street are locally owned, every one of them, because the chains never came.

Georgetown also wins on water. The town sits where five rivers — the Black, Great Pee Dee, Little Pee Dee, Waccamaw and Sampit — meet before emptying into Winyah Bay. That confluence shaped everything about this place, and it’s why the fishing, boating and marsh views here are what they are.

The real answer: do both. Georgetown is an hour north of Charleston and 45 minutes south of Myrtle Beach. Build a long weekend that starts in one and ends in the other, and give Georgetown the days you’d rather spend slowly.