Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Yeah Summer Vacation at Last!!



What is it about the word vacation that totally makes me scream with joy! We were so ready for a few days to sleep in and go where life (or our reservations) take us. We are traveling south and our first main stop was Savannah Georgia. We feel in love with this beautiful city at first glance. We were only there for a few days, but boy did we crammed as much as we could into those few days.
The Mercer Williams house. I could so live there!
 We knew we wanted to see Jim Williams house ever since we saw the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It lived up to all we had heard. The house is beautiful and the furnishings were absolutely gorgeous. I wished photographs would have been allowed, because there were so many great rooms I wish I could have shared with you all.
Shops on River Street
The Cotton Exchange
 For our grandson's girlfriend we went on the lookout for some supernatural items since this is her passion.....not mine. I have to say Savannah is choked full of ghostly spooky tales.
The one we enjoyed the most was The Pirate House.

So many stories surround this 1700 original building. The best is that is was often used to shanghai many an unsuspecting soul to serve as a mate on a short handed ship. As the story goes there was a tunnel that started somewhere from the Captain's Room and lead down to the docks.One story that we were told was about a police officer who had stopped in for a drink (back in the pirate days) and was knocked unconscious and when he woke up he was out to sea. It took him two years to get back home!

Robert Louis Stevenson also mentioned this place in his world famous book Treasure Island. Some of the action is suppose to have taken place right there. Hanging in the Captions Room are frames containing pages from an early, and very rare edition of the book.
This building contains so many twists and turns. There is even a building within one of the buildings. It is now a restaurant and is well worth a visit. As we were being seated I was a tad worried we would never find our way out and would end up on Captain Jack Sparrow's ship.....oh no, wait that just was a wish I had tehe!!

One bit of interesting trivia we learned was that during the Civil War when the Union soldiers were held up in the Colonial Cemetery they became bored. So what does a bored soldier do with his time....he's re-carves headstones! Yes they changed dates on some making it look as if some people lived for a very long time,or making a 9yr look as if he had a 7yr old wife and so on.

There is another world famous cemetery called Bonaventure Cemetery. I so wanted to go and see it but was advised not to due to many people being robbed.....not sure if that was from thugs or ghosts I should have asked.
Much of the city is actually paved and have had houses built right over old graves. We read some stories about body parts surfacing at times, up through flooded basements and of course during excavation.
Savannah is historic, quaint, spooky and down right gorgeous.....and we loved every minute we were there.

Oh and I nearly left out the best part.....our room! We stayed at The Mansion on Forsyth Park. It was a bit pricey but we thought it was worth it since we would only be there a few days. So now we're on the road again heading on down to Florida.....to us it's not a vacation if you don't get to see the ocean!!