November 16, 2009

Mmmmm......Mmmmmmmm......is there anything as good as sleeping for almost 12 hours?! Well, maybe there are one or two things that rank up there with sleep but this morning both Linda and I were fully appreciative of the fact that we had just had the best sleep ever :) Savannah is famous for her history and boasts some pretty amazing ghost stories so maybe we had a couple of those ghosts watching over us as we slept like babies last night.

We had decided to forgo breakfast this morning with a plan to prepare for lunch at Mrs Wilkes restaurant where she's been serving up traditional southern cuisine for more than 67 years. Well....actually, Mrs Wilkes passed away about a decade ago but her family has continued in the same tradition and literally hundreds of visitors grace her table each and every day for lunch. Her place has never advertised at all and yet it is packed with line ups that reach down the tree lined streets and around the corner from about 10:00 a.m. onward. The restaurant is only open from 11:00-2:00 each day and everyone is seated family style at common tables with platters and bowls of food to share. You're welcomed to your table by the restaurant staff and invited to get to know your new family for this meal that you'd share with them. Our 'family' today consisted of 10 people (including Linda and I). There was a couple of full time R.V.'rs who have been on the road for 3 years! A couple of friends from Savannah, a young couple vacationing from Florida, a mother and son duo, and Linda and I. The meal was amazing but I think the part that I'll remember most of all is the people that we shared the meal with. The R.V.'rs were characters of no fixed address whom we had chatted with in line for some time but the biggest impact for me was the mother and son duo. She was visiting him from South Carolina (about a 4 hour drive away) and planned to come back to see him again tomorrow and on Wednesday too as he is a helicopter pilot in the military and has been deployed to Afghanistan on Wednesday. During our table introductions and in the conversation that followed over lunch....I couldn't help but reflect on the mixed emotions she had shared with us. Her pride in him and his chosen career path blended with the trepidation that was apparent as he talked about his imminent deployment. I wish him and all the men and women involved in conflicts throughout the world a speedy and safe return to their homes. Our lunch was a cornucopia of southern dishes....we had the most delicious southern fried chicken, black eyed peas, collared greens, okra, corn break, BBQ, mac'n cheese, mashed potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, cole slaw, pickled cucumbers, creamed corn, and beef stew.....yes.....there was a lot of food and it just kept coming! To top it all off....just when we thought we wouldn't be able to eat another bite....out came the bananna cream pie.....and yes.....we both found the strength to eat another bite :)

Our walk through the historic district's streets en route to Mrs. Wilke's restaurant continued after our lunch and we visited a few more of the 22 downtown parks that make this city seem like a rural community with trees lining almost every street and parks scattered everywhere. Many of the trees are giant oaks with their branches inviting the kid that lives in all of us to do our best to climb the branches that stretch forever as two trees can span an entire city block. In addition to being just plain beautiful...many of the parks in Savannah have been home to many movie sets including Forrest Gump...yes....the famous scene of Forrest sitting on a bench in the park is right here in the heart of Savannah. Tomorrow we'll be sure to get a picture of it for posterity.

From parks to bookstores and more parks to architecture that caused us both to walk 'without due care' as our heads swivelled on our necks trying to take it all in. Every single house in this district (and the district is blocks and blocks and blocks long and wide) is sooo old and there is soooo much history. If my information is correct then...Savannah has more in tact historic buildings than anywhere else in America - and there are a lot of them and they're all lived in and most of them are beautifully maintained.

After our walk around the city (and we've not even covered half of it yet) we made our way to the tourist info centre where we discovered that the least hospitable people in this town work at that location! From the Info Centre we called a cab and Clarence took us to a store out of town where we could get a few things for the fridge in our room and I could find a new camera as I dropped the last one and broke it :(

We made our purchases and when asking the young woman checking us through her till for the location of a courtesy phone to call a cab she invited us to use her personal phone which we did. I think she should be working at the Tourist Info Centre instead of the two women who are working there!!!

We're back at our hotel and it's no surprise that we've skipped dinner tonight - lunch did us both in for today! Tonight there was a dip in the hot tub and a very quick dip in the very chilly outdoor pool and a lot of studying and of course...there was a little time to catch up on the blog so happy reading....tomorrow is a new day :)

L & L