Savannah

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Everyone said what a beautiful city Savannah is and they were right. Twelve squares, each named after early citizens, dominate as you cross the grid of streets which is the layout of the old part of the city. Around another square you go, right, left, left and right again back onto the street you were driving up, until the next square.

The Live Oak is the dominant tree hung with drooping Spanish moss. Live Oak because it is evergreen. The leaves don’t look anything like the deciduous tree’s leaves but they grow just as big.

The Spanish moss isn’t moss at all but an epiphytic air plant. We were warned not to touch it as it is full of microscopic biting red bugs. Apparently this is the origin of the term ‘don’t let the bed bugs bite’ as the moss was used for stuffing mattresses in the early days.

We’re in Savannah to see our two grandsons Aidan and Nicholas who live here with their mum, Kim. You may remember them from Poland last year.

We took a ride around the city on the Hop On Hop Off Olde Savannah Trolley with Aidan and Nicholas. They were made interesting by having actors play famous people from Savannah such as Robert Louis Stevenson who was inspired by tales of capturing drunk unsuspecting men and taking them out through tunnels onto waiting sailing ships, and Mother Mathilde Beasley who was the first African American Catholic nun and Juliette Gordon Low who founded the Girl Scouts.

We passed many beautiful, sometimes famous, mansions as well as film settings. Forest Gump was filmed here but the famous bench he sat on has been removed to the museum as it was being vandalised. It now costs $10 to sit on it said the guide.

Hoping off at the Jepson Centre for the Arts we found and exhibition by Japanese video game designer Keita Takahashi which they, and Ian, enjoyed.

We finished the day with a welcome swim and dinner at their favourite Italian restaurant.

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Photos

The phone box made famous...
by Julia Roberts’ character in the 90s film ‘Something to talk about’.

Mercer Williams house...
of ‘In the Garden of Good and Evil’ fame.

Where duels used to take place in Colonial Park Cemetery
‘Pistols for two, and coffee for one’ said the guide when describing the practise of duelling. The participants’ names are all recorded here.