Travel Tuesday – Our Savannah Adventure!

I can’t begin to describe how beautiful Savannah is!  All my life I have longed to see Spanish moss hanging from trees.  Being from California, this was definitely something new that I had never seen before. However, recently Zack and I found a similar plant growing on trees in Solvang, up near Santa Barbara!!  That is a story for another time though.  Back to Savannah! We hadn’t had the best accommodations in Charleston (I learned my lesson on how to properly choose an Airbnb!!) but I was convinced the house Monica and I had chosen for Savannah would be spectacular and I wasn’t disappointed.  It was immaculate!  The woman who owns this house has superb taste!  There was artwork everywhere and beauty in every detail of every corner of this house.  The house was built in the 1860s, with wooden floors and paneling on the walls.  I loved how the floor would creak when we walked on it and how everything just felt like we had gone back in time.

Spanish moss was EVERYWHERE in this city.  We stayed in Savannah for two days and it just wasn’t enough time.  I couldn’t stop staring at the trees, it just didn’t get old no matter how many walks I went on.  Stunning!  The azaleas were everywhere as well, just like in Charleston!  I loved Charleston, but Zack, Monica, Joe, and I decided that Savannah was our favorite.  The way that the city is planned out is spectacular!  Streets are lined up in a checkerboard pattern and for every block or two, there is a park!  The most famous of these parks is Forsyth Park which can be seen in the first image below.  Wow, so beautiful!

The funny thing I didn’t know about Spanish moss is to not pick it up from the ground.  I wanted to bring some home but didn’t want to be disrespectful and pick it off of a tree so I grabbed some from the ground just before the gardeners were about the mow it up.  On the way back to our Airbnb a man stopped me and asked me where I had gotten the moss.  I thought I was in trouble!  He explained that if I got it off of the ground I probably already had CHIGGERS crawling up my arm!  Ugh!  I dropped that quick!  He then just told me to get some off of a tree since they had plenty.  When we got back to San Diego, I noticed some moss outside and realized Zack must have brought it home.  When I asked him, I found out that he had picked it off of the ground!  Later he had red marks that could have been chiggers, but I am no expert, and he swears he didn’t have them…but who knows!

When I could finally tear myself away from looking at the trees, we headed down to the waterfront.  We walked along River Street in the Historic District.  So much history!  The streets are still cobblestone, made from the stones that were put in the ballasts of the ships.  There are a ton of adorable shops, restaurants, and bars as well.  Also, we got some cookies from Byrds Famous Cookies!  The peach ones were our favorite!  We also spent time walking down Oglethorpe Avenue and went in the shops and got a great seafood boil (at least that’s what my husband and friends told me but I hate seafood so I will have to take their word for it!).  There were just little markets and tasty restaurants everywhere!

One morning Katelyn and I headed out early to take some “senior portraits.”  She’s graduating from high school this year and this was just a great place to take pictures.  Of course, I wanted to go to Forsyth Park but as you can imagine, it was incredibly crowded.  Still beautiful though!  I would recommend going here early in the morning to see it in all its beauty without all of the people.  It ended up that one of the best places to shoot was right at our Airbnb since it was so lovely.  Zack avoided all of this photography by taking a historical tour with Joe and Monica on bicycles.  They all loved it and highly recommend it!

The last two things I would also recommend would be to walk inside the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist. I felt like I was back in Italy!  So beautiful!  That was definitely worth the time as was the Bonaventure Cemetery just outside of town.  I had seen images of this cemetery on social media and in movies and I was dying to go there.  It was like no cemetery I had ever seen before.  We wandered around for a while noting how families have been burying their loved ones on the same plot for literally hundreds of years.  Some of the gravestones are sinking as well because the ground is so close to sea level and it is so wet.  With tons of moss and beautiful sculptures everywhere, I could easily have stayed here longer.  However, we were also anxious to head to Tybee Island and get a glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean and the sun was starting to set, so we headed southwest.  This place was the cutest!  Windy but cute!  We walked out on the pier and marveled at the people actually going in the water when we were freezing.

We ended our trip with one last wonderful evening in our Airbnb.  We grabbed some Mexican food (which was surprisingly amazing!) for Monica and me, the guys got MORE seafood and Katelyn ordered some vegan food from The Fox and the Fig(tasty!) and we sat around our table pretending that we owned the place.  Monica and I were especially obnoxious as we adopted our version of a fancy Savannah accent for the evening.  We butchered it but it sure was fun!  So, I say…GO TO SAVANNAH!  Spend at LEAST two days there but three or four would be even better!