Danny and I have been talking about making a trip to Savannah for over 2 years. It kept getting put off because of things like working on a Master’s Degree, ruptured canine ACL’s and (of course) that pesky little thing known as work. Sometime in February I noticed that my birthday fell on a Thursday. I have never taken time off for my birthday and decided that this would be the year. Sure it seems kind of indulgent to plan a trip around getting a year older, but hey, neither one of us took any time off the entire first quarter so what the hell?
Day .25
The original plan had been to sleep in, drop the dogs off and hit the road mid-morning so that we would have the entire afternoon to explore Savannah. Of course this meant that work stuff happened and we didn’t actually wind up getting out of town until after lunch. We rolled into Savannah after 5pm and got checked into our B&B, The Ziegler House Inn.
The Ziegler House was phenomenal. The innkeeper, Jackie, pointed out a few restaurants on the map and we settled on The Crystal Beer Parlor for dinner.
We spent about an hour after dinner walking around. We wandered past The Mercer House. I am a big Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fan so it was pretty cool to see the house that Jim Williams lived in.
Forsyth Park was just a short walk away so we headed over there next. This was where I learned that mosquitos and gnats are just as big of a problem in Georgia as they are in North Carolina. I was getting eaten alive, so, we didn’t last long at the park before heading back to the room for the evening.
Day 1
After waking up and enjoying the (incredible) fresh baked pastries that Jackie left in our room the day before, we headed out to Bonaventure Cemetery. It was, after all, my birthday. What better way to celebrate my advanced age than touring a cemetery?
Bonaventure is HUGE and I was really glad that we decided to book a tour to make sure that we saw all the highlights. I was also thankful that I had the forethought to throw bug spay in my bag before we left.
Our tour took us all over the cemetery and it was cool hearing about all of the history. But, I was 100% obsessed with the trees at Bonaventure (and really all over Savannah). I took approximately one billion photos of the trees and only a handful of everything else (thankfully Danny had my point and shoot and picked up my slack).
The above photo is at the Conrad Aiken gravesite – more Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fandom. I actually made Danny watch the movie with me the week before we left for our trip so that he would have a reference point for all of my geekery.
It was well after 1pm when we finished up with the tour so we headed back into the historic district, ate and spent the rest of the afternoon riding around Savannah on a hop on/hop off tour bus (we discovered these in Boston last year and are huge fans of using these to cover a lot of ground in a new place).
That evening we walked downtown for a nice birthday dinner. We hit up a place called Garibaldi’s and it was fabulous. The drinks were strong, the food was good and the ambiance was great. Thumbs up all around.
Day 2
Our second (and last) day in Savannah was devoted almost entirely to sightseeing in the historic district/downtown/river area. Our hop on/hop off bus ticket was good for a second day, so, we set out fairly early with the hope of covering a lot of ground.
I don’t remember how much that bus ticket cost, but however much it was was totally worth it. We got off at most of the stops, wandered around some of the park squares…
…and checked out some of the classier establishments that Savannah has to offer.
The above photo was taken at a place near river called Wet Willies. The name sums up everything one needs to know about this spot.
Around 3pm both Danny and I started hitting the exhaustion wall. We had plans later that evening to drive out to Skidaway Island to visit with Danny’s Uncle/Aunt and decided that we needed to head to the room to regroup a bit before making that trip. We had a nice visit but I managed to leave without taking a single photo with them.
The next morning we got up and hit the road around 6:30. We are crazy people who plan our trips around our dogs and we wanted to get back and pick them up before the vet closed at 12:30pm. It was a whirlwind trip and I am glad that we finally made it down for a visit.
