Randy and I took a trip to Savannah a couple of weeks ago to get in a little relaxation (read: sleep!) before baby arrives. It was right at the cusp of my travel limitations, but we made it back without having a Georgia peach so I say it was a good trip! And we slept in every morning. (Yeah!)
And our hotel was right across the street from a Krispie Kreme Doughnut shop (my favorite!) so we had doughnuts every morning for breakfast. Yum!
We did lots of the things we like best: seeing the sights, taking tours, checking out the history of the city. And Savannah has tons of it all. We started with a river boat tour, which was really interesting and a good way to get the lay of the land. The river is not very wide and apparently there is a huge container shipping port in Savannah. That's a container ship in the distance.
Before we left it was really hot on deck. There wasn't much breeze so I was ready for us to go!
Afterwards we walked around and came across Paula Dean's restaurant and store. I am in front of her store and the red striped awning is the restaurant.
The city was designed around little squares, kind of like little parks. They are really fun, with statues and trees and benches. We saw lots of set ups for parties and weddings in the different parks. Here's Randy with John Wesley. I didn't know he was ever in Savannah, but it turns out he was. Who knew?
We visited Forsythe Park and there was a sidewalk art festival put on by the local art school. It was really interesting and fun to see.
You should have seen the people working on their projects!
This guy was one of our favorite characters.
The fountain in the middle of the park.
The next two are some of the old homes we toured, built in the late 1700, early 1800s. Amazing architecture and cool designs. The second one was the first home with indoor plumbing. It was supplied with a series of cisterns. And it had a little catwalk/bridge thing on the upper floors. The kids would have a blast!
We went to an old cemetery that was where General Sherman made his camp when he invaded Savannah. There are some old tombs in there!
When the army left, some of the stone markers were knocked down and in the clean up effort, they didn't know where they all went so they just lined them up along the wall rather than put them at the wrong graves.
This is one old tree! Look at its long gray beard! No really, the trees were very pretty!
We visited Fort Jackson, which was interesting, but not very significant because it didn't see much action in battle. But it had some big cannons!
And some little cannons...
Okay, so this is how big the container ships are that come up the river. You can see the people standing on the top of the fort and the container ship towering above them. The ships looked like lego towers with their various colored "blocks".
We also hit the Railroad Museum. It's a round house (with half of the circle removed) with some old rail cars. They have some really amazing old cars that were used for the president of the railroad and for the line inspector. They traveled in style! The kitchen and dining area reminded me of an airplane galley with all their latched doors and cabinets.
There was a huge battle during the Revolutionary War in Savannah, one of the bloodiest. This is the Memorial for the battle. There's a square for every non-British life that was lost during the battle. (There were actually several other countries that fought on our side during the War. Again, no idea!)
We also checked out a botanical garden. This was very relaxing and peaceful. And not many bugs either! There were lots of award-winning roses too. They were a little past peak, but still very bright and colorful.
We went to the Savannah History Museum and saw (one of ) the benches from Forest Gump! One of the squares in Savannah was transformed into the bus stop where Forest sat to tell his story. Aren't you impressed? :)
There was a special exhibit quilt show at the museum. So I took this picture for my friend, Sherry, who loves all things quilted. Randy was so good to indulge me!
Then we took a little train ride back at the train museum. This is the lone picture of the two of us from our trip. Not very impressive, especially since we had to take it ourselves!
Okay, so those of you who know our friend,
Mr. TD, this was our tour guide/conductor for our train ride. It was totally him! He reminded us so much of Mr. TD that we had to take a picture of him to prove it! The only difference was Mr. TD has more hair. And this guy was an "engineer" too!
We ate some amazing food while we were in Savannah (besides the Krispie Kremes). We found a restaurant that cooks real comfort food. They serve cafeteria-style and you pick a meat and three sides and we had more food on one plate than the two of use should have eaten. (Randy got two huge pork chops!) We had some amazing sweet potatoes and macaroni and cheese, and of course okra. That plus some sweet tea to wash it down was enough to send us into sugar shock! Plus we visited a couple of candy shops (serving homemade pralines!) and a yummy ice cream parlor. I gained enough weight for the entire rest of my pregnancy! (And Randy too!) Such a good time! I highly recommend such a trip at least once a year for everyone, with or without a baby on the way.