Plantation owners who came to Beaufort for the bracing breezes and summer conviviality built many of the historic mansions. If you stroll down Bay Street with its art galleries and boutiques, you will find a number of restaurants and cafes all opening up to the waterfront. There you can eat the local catch, be it shrimp, oysters as sweet as you will ever find, or blue crab. She Crab soup is a local wonder. Anywhere you wander away from downtown, you will find excellent food - from barbecue to haute cuisine.
Many restaurants have musical entertainment.
Luxurious Bed and Breakfast Inns in Ante-bellum houses, and accommodations are present in Beaufort and the surrounds offering every kind hospitality. Beaufort Memorial Hospital and the Naval Hospital attract some of the finest physicians you could hope to find. There are 12 golf courses within a 25-mile radius, museums, tours, and festivals going on year round. Three of the most popular are the Gullah Festival at the end of May, the Water Festival in July and the Shrimp Festival in October. All year round there are music, dance and other cultural events happening.