Georgia Trip: Days 1-3

Thursday-Friday

My trip technically began Wednesday night when I tool the redeye to Toronto and met up with my mom for the flight to Atlanta. We didn’t do much during the day Thursday, I slept on the couch until it was time to go out for dinner. We went to trivia night at a Georgia Tech bar. Our team was consistently in fourth, until the last round when my cousin’s boyfriend threw the game and we ended up in last place. This was good strategy because last place gets a round of free shots.

Friday we left around 9 to begin the road trip to Savannah. There were a couple of false starts, including one embarrassing, confusion-ridden drive thru stop at the Krispy Kreme. We didn’t go into Savannah that night, instead heading straight to our rented condo on Tybee Island (about 30 minutes outside of Savannah). We drank a little wine, took a walk on the beach, and went to dinner at a horrible place called the crab shack. The main drawing point for the crab shack is its 38 live crocodiles. The food was bad and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Saturday

Saturday morning began with breakfast at Clary’s Café is famous I think because it was in Midnight in the Garden of God and Evil. (The Garden of Good and Evil, by the way, is not an actual garden. It is, in fact, a metaphor). After a massive southern breakfast (including biscuits and grits) we drove in circles for awhile trying to find the information centre. Until this point we didn’t have any maps of Savannah and were just getting by on sheer luck. We found the info centre and booked ourselves on a trolley tour. The tour was over an hour long. I’ve forgotten much of what I learned. Let me think. I learned that rich people’s houses have entrances on the second floor, that iron was a sign of wealth, and that almost all of the original Squares still exist in Savannah. I can’t get over how beautiful Savannah is. The houses and buildings alone are just gorgeous, and if that were all there was, the city would still be pretty. But everything is framed with lush vegetation, giant gnarled oak tress dripping with Spanish moss, some kind of colourful flower in full bloom, and houses draped in wisteria. It’s marvelous.

We hopped off the tour at one point to wander around River St, which is all quaintly cobbled. We saw Factor’s Walk, which I couldn’t get over. There’s a steep drop off as you approach the river, and there’s some huge elevation difference between River St and the street next to it. The tall buildings on River St can be accessed in the back on the 3rd and 4th floors by suspended walkways. I just loved it. Every city should have a Factor’s Walk. The name has something to do with the cotton trade, but I forget what exactly.

One thing the tour guide on the trolley didn’t mention was that Savannah also has the childhood home of Flannery O’Connor. My cousin happened to see a plaque while on the trolley and we went back later for a tour of the house. Flannery is just an incredible writer who writes these very dark, southern stories. She also, I was surprised to find out, has my birthday. As far as house museums go, it was pretty good (I used to work in a house museum, so I consider myself somewhat of an expert on the topic). It was restored to the time when Flannery lived there (during the depression), and they had some of the original furniture and family items. It was a highlight of the day, because it was so unexpected. None of us knew that she had spent any time in Savannah, because she was born and died in Milledgeville, Ga.

We had dinner that night at a fancy ass restaurant overlooking the river. It had once housed Sherman’s men. It seems like every building in Savannah once housed Sherman’s men. The food was great; the waiter was probably the best waiter I’ve ever had. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but he was so charming and said all the right things. Like, when my aunt got over-excited and broke the stem on her wine glass, he was all courtesy, saying that he does that every day. We could have told him that we liked to eat humans and he would have smiled and said that from time to time, he too enjoys the other white meat. We tipped him a lot.

After dinner we went on a Haunted Pub Tour given by this guy in civil war period costume. In the south, when they talk about period wear, that period is almost always Civil War. Occasionally it’s antebellum, but that’s mostly for the plantation tours. In Savannah you can drink in public places as long as the liquor is in a plastic cup. So the tour goes from pub to pub, with scary stories and beer along the way. We didn’t see any ghosts, nor did we capture any ghostly-remnants on film - but not for lack of trying. Well, I might have gotten one orb, but I don't know if I'm a believer.

I'll post more later about our last day in Savannah (otherwise known as The Day of Tragedies) and my time in Atlanta.

All my Savannah pics can be seen here.