A birthday

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Today Nicholas turns 12. We were with him last year in Poland for his 11th birthday the same day that Elliot was born. He turns 1 today and is nearly walking.

Nicholas chose a Japanese Hibachi restaurant for dinner which was very entertaining. A chef cooks the food in front of you including a mountain of rice, which Nicholas loves.

Prior to dinner we met Aidan out at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum not far from the city. The boys were at a holiday camp there where active marines take them for, among other things, physical exercises.

On show was the 5000th B17 bomber. It looked shiny and new so I don’t think it was used.

A couple of days earlier Kim took us all out to Old Fort Jackson closer to the mouth of the Savannah River. Built in 1808 it was to defend the city against possible attack by either France or Britain. It was also used during the Civil War. At 1 o’clock each day one of the cannons is fired which made a pretty impressive noise. I think it was also for the benefit of passengers on the local steamship passing by.

Nicholas loves pralines so off we go back to town and down to River Street which runs alongside the river, to the best praline shop to get some. They are very sweet with pecans on top of fudge. Sweet shops contain barrels of every kind of lolly you can think of bought by weight. Imagination runs wild with even the humble rice cake dipped in chocolate and covered in M&Ms. A variation of toffee apples sees apples treated the same way.

The Savannah River is quite wide with the port up river from the city. We didn’t realise how big a port it was until sitting at dinner on our first night we noticed the whole of the restaurant window was taken up with a fully laden container ship sailing past, followed soon after by another one going the other way.

We were very sad to say goodbye to Kim and the boys and we’re so glad we had taken the opportunity to ‘hop’ over to Savannah to see them.

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