A week in Savannah

My husband and I spent a week in Savannah, a potential location for our next move. I was thankful for the great room we had at the Hilton Garden Inn, as we spent a lot more time in it, than normal while on a vacation. The beginning of the week was supposed to provide rain and bad weather, while the channel 8 weatherman promised clear skies for the remainder of the week. With hope, that he would be right, Ray and I did our housing research first, in the rain, so that we could potentially enjoy the promised clear days, sight seeing and enjoying the historic Savannah area.

After two days of looking at houses in the rain, on day three we decided to throw in the towel and venture into the historic area and start our sight seeing early. We parked and then had enjoyed lunch at Five Guys, at Ellis Square, which has unbelievably delicious burgers, before wandering down to Riverstreet. We enjoyed checking out all the little shops along Riverstreet and we even toured a custom built Pirates ship for a gentleman that passed away before it was completed. My favorite custom feature on the ship was the stain glass panels in the doors, they were each different and so beautiful.

          

After touring Riverstreet we went back to the hotel and had the concierge book us for a day tour with Old Savannah Tours. We got up early the next day and went to Historic Savannah, to the visitor's center and boarded the trolley to begin our tour. We had a very entertaining tour guide that took a group of us on a 90-minute comprehensive look at Savannah’s fascinating past 275 years of history. We toured much of Savannah’s beautiful historic district, including the Victorian district, five of the historic squares, River Street and City Market, while our tour guide shared many fascinating facts and stories about Georgia’s “First City!”

Since we had so much fun on our Old Savannah tour we book another tour, Ghosts & Gravestones Frightseeing Tours for Sunday night. On Sunday we went back to the Historic district and enjoyed Sunday brunch at Paula Deans famous The Lady & Sons on Congress Street. The food was delicious! We ate hoecakes with syrup, fried chicken, bbq pulled pork, green beans, macaroni and cheese, collared greens and yummy banana pudding for dessert; served with an iced cold glass of Paula's Southern Sweet Tea!

Sunday night we started our tour by boarding the Trolley of Doom for our ghost tour. The trolley conductor, our tour guide, was dressed in full costume with a black lace fan and black veil; she was a Savannah black widow from the 1800's. Our haunting experience, included a does of humor, we stopped at several of the historic homes and the Colonial Park cemetery before ending at the River Street’s Perkins and Sons Ship Chandlery. It was quite an entertaining tour to say the least. We enjoyed dinner at Bone Fish before going back to the hotel.

We decided to leave a day early, taking two days to drive to Missouri instead of trying to push thru the 14 hour drive in one day. On Monday morning we checked out of the hotel and before leaving Savannah, we visited Bonaventure Cemetery, a great ending to our Savannah trip. This is the cemetery where Bird Girl was removed, and Little Gracie Watson, the Telfair family and many other historic person were buried.The cemetery was so amazing; we drove through most of it, with the top on the car down and the heater on high. We only got our and viewed certain grave sites, which we had learned about from our historic and ghost tours.

It was a great way to end our Savannah vacation, which while enjoyable, was not what I had hoped for. Going there with advanced expectations for what I might find, Savannah to offer, based on shared stories from friends. Friends, who raved of the beauty the city offered, I was only left disappointed and in the end, Savannah was removed from the list.

I took so many photos of the two main places we had visited, historic Savannah and Bonaventure Cemetery; I am splitting it up in two parts. Part 1 will be of the historic district and Part 2 will be the Bonaventure Cemetery tour. I hope you enjoy!