Does anyone have any direct knowledge of the area around Furman? Are there commercial venues to walk to? Coffee shops? Restaurants? Shops? I’m trying to determine what is accessible without a car.
Go to Bing.com, type in Furman University, select Birds Eye View and take a virtual tour of the town.
Not much to walk to around Furman. But the campus is like a park - locals use the campus as a park. There are free buses to take you downtown - which is awesome. Most students have cars - but you can get by without one if necessary.
Nothing walkable around campus.
Furman actually connects to the Swamp Rabbit Trail which is a bike/walk trail that goes through Traveler’s Rest. This summer I did a sustainability program at Furman and we biked to a cafe in travelers rest by way of The Swamp Rabbit Trail . It is not necessarily walking distance, but it’s something fun to do on the weekend when you have more time to kill.
The Swamp Rabbit Trail is great; with it, downtown and lots of other things are certainly accessible (via bike). Unlike what you’d expect from a mid-sized Southern city, Greenville’s downtown is actually very busy and has lots of stores and restaurants–ranging from even a Brooks Brothers and an Anthropologie to a Staples and lots of others. There is a large mall (Haywood) but it’s on the other side of town, and downtown actually has enough in it that mall trips aren’t necessary.
My son recently graduated from Furman. He only had a car senior year. EVERYBODY else had a car and he NEVER had trouble getting a ride!
There really is no place to walk to off campus, but he had a bike. You can bike up to Traveler’s Rest or down to Greenville on the Swamp Rabbit Trail. One semester when he was living on campus, he had an internship in Greenville 2 days a week, he road the city bus which picked him up right at the main gate. ( That was not his favorite mode of transportation, but I think it was a very good experience for him.)
(It is a fabulous campus and university, and Greenville is a great town. We had never been there until it was time for college visits his jr. year of HS. He had a wonderful 4 years and grew so much as a person- great mentoring profs !)