Savannah, Ya'll!

Approximately five hours from Orlando lies the beautiful and historic city of Savannah.  I finally went to this city this past weekend with a group of my friends.  I wasn't sure what exactly to expect, but I knew that it would be a charming southern city.  And Paula Dean is from there, too so what could be better than that?  We got there safe and sound, and our hotel was in a perfect location across from River Street, the nightlife street right on the river, hence the name - duh! winning!  Sorry I couldn't resist...So here's a quick rundown of our trip:

Day 1:  Was the best....day....ever.  And let me tell you why.  Mrs. Wilke's Boarding House.  Amazing!  We got up early and headed over to this gem to wait in line for lunch.  I need to read up on the history of this place, but basically you wait in line to share a table with other people.  And when I say wait, I mean like WAIT in line like you are in Disney World waiting for a ride.  We kept inching up and up in line, tummies grumbling, only to have to wait some more.  I was a bit skeptical at first, not really thinking that there could be anything so good that it was worth waiting so long.  But finally, we got IN.  And it's set up like someone's home, lots of pictures on the walls....and then they take you to your table.  And it's like a scene of the southern last supper.  There had to be about twenty different dishes on that table.  Fried chicken, collard greens, mac and cheese, potato salad, BISCUITS, sweet corn, squash, beef stew, CORNBREAD, stuffing, green beans, and on and on and on.  You just kept passing plates back and forth, stuffing your face.  It was heaven!  Definitely worth the wait.  And when we left, there happened to be some students doing a taping of people's reactions so we all got together with our tourist enthusiasm to talk about how great the food was.  I need to look that up actually - I wonder how it came out.  After Mrs. Wilke's, we headed over to our River Boat cruise.  It was so hot though that I think I nodded off for most of it.  But it was a nice, relaxing afternoon.  To end the day, we ended up at Moon River Brewery on Bay St.  More good food, mmmmmm.

FORREST!!

Day 2:  Trolley tour through the city!  Yay, I loved seeing all of the houses and squares.  Savannah has a city square every few blocks.  I love cities where you can just walk around.  It was so quaint and cute.  I also loved the style of all of the homes.  I get very excited when I see brick - I'm a dork.  But it's true, I love old houses.  We went on a tour of the Thomas-Owens house and OMG - I think we had the most eccentric tour guide.  Eccentric or high...or both.  I had to stifle my laughter just listening to him speak.  I just couldn't get over his tone of voice and his body language.  Almost as if he thought he was more knowledgeable than everyone else, which he probably was.  But he literally had his nose in the air the whole time and would sigh "Any questionsssssssssss....."  Ugh.  I must say though, that the best part of our trolley tour was seeing "Forrest Gump" run off of the trolley in front of us and run down the street.  Hilarious!  I got a picture of it....Run Forrest Run!!!

Foodwise, we ate at Paula Dean's restaurant, Lady and Sons, for lunch.  It was great.  I had an asparagus sandwich and it was delicious.  I'm on an asparagus kick lately - it's somehow become my favorite vegetable.  For dinner, we ended up at Pirate's House, an incredibly old place.  I finally had some catfish - what I had been craving the whole time!

Lady and Sons

We went out on River Street during the night and ended up at the same karaoke bar after hopping around a bit.  We met a group of cute military boys who were really nice and funny.  I ended up doing some impromptu swing dancing with one of the guys.  It was actually fun just having him spin me around and dip me to the ground, though I do give him major props for not dropping me since he was obviously hammered.

Day 3:  Sad day.  Why do weekends go by so fast?!?  We visited the Visitor's Center and saw the actual Forrest Gump bench in the museum.  I had to say I was sad I couldn't physically sit in it.  Besides Forrest Gump, a lot of other movies have been filmed in Savannah, including Forces of Nature and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  I really need to watch that last one because the book was everywhere and a lot of it was filmed in Forsyth Park.  I honestly have no recollection of what we ate.....???  Oh, that's right,  Wendy's on the drive back to reality!