Day 61 - Savannah: Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room, Telfair Museum, Bonaventure Cemetery

There is a super famous restaurant in Savannah that everyone knows as you can see from the people waiting outside. I never do this, not even in San Francisco, but since we are here, I am waiting in the cold before the opening hour. The restaurant is Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room. It's open from 11 am to 2 pm. If you are still in line by closing time, too bad, see you tomorrow. The menu is fixed. The only thing you get to choose is the dessert: peach cobbler or banana pudding. You get to sit with another 10 strangers in a round table as two girls bring to the table plates of fried chicken, ribs, collard greens, butter beans, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and cucumber salad, red rice, mac and cheese, coleslaw,and so many other bowls of cooked goodness that I can't remember. It was all delicious! The strangers became our friends. We noticed that some New Yorkers have a different sense of humor that might bump with the southern hospitality. They can't help it.

Line at 10:45 am

...while waiting

President Barrack Obama sat on this chair

I didn't know that before going but this is the video.
I ate so much, I hated myself. It was too good to pass. Now we had to work it out with a nice walk.
We took the city walking tour with Free Tour By Foot. We had an awesome tour guide and at the end we had a little discussion next to the Confederate Statue in Forsyth Park...very instructive...😯

Last sight to see for the day was the Telfair Museum, which was the first public art museum of the Southern States. This cannot be confused with the modern building across the street, the Jepson Center for the Arts. The ticket is valid for both.

Telfair

Yes, this is the statue on the cover of the book 'Midnight in the garden of good and evil'. It was originally at the Bonaventure cemetery, but it had to be removed because it was so famous with the tourists.

We had to go to the Bonaventure Cemetery, but we were too late. It closed at 5 pm.

Here we strolled around the river walk.

Waving Girl Statue was about a real girl that had lost her fiancee at sea and waived to all the boats to see if he had come back.

Waving Girl Statue. 

Oldest House in Savannah. The flag is Irish.

Day 60 - Savannah: Mercer House, Crystal Beer Parlor, First African Baptist Church, the Perch

Today is the day I am going to visit the famous/notorious Mercer House.
This is now called the Mercer Williams House Museum, and it is the main sight of the Book.
I can't wait to see what the interior looks like.
This is where James Williams lived. This is where he worked and conducted his business as an antiques dealer. This is where he had his shop and restored his antiques. This is where he gave his exclusive Christmas Parties.  This is where he murdered his lover, Danny Lewis Hansford! This is where he died of heart failure just six months after the last trial!
We drove straight there and took the tour. Pictures are not allowed. The house is everything I expected and more. I love the views from the large windows on the garden palmettos and palm trees.
My favorite room is his library. The desk has several pictures of him with several women, including his sister. She is in her eighties and she still lives in the house with her cat. We got to pet her black cat, Shelton, as he was following us around.

 We stopped for lunch at the Crystal Beer Parlor. This restaurant has been around since prohibition time and probably even before as a speakeasy. It has a lot of history and the food is very traditional of Savannah.

Crystal Crab Stew and Chicken Pot Pie

After lunch we drove to the First African Baptist Church. We took the tour with the pastor's wife. The church has seen so much. It was built by enslaved people, who had to work at night after their day jobs. It was one of the first baptist churches in the nation. It was founded in 1773 under the leadership of Reverend George Leile. When The British left Savannah, Rev. Leile had to leave for Jamaica to avoid enslavement and he became the first American missionary. The sanctuary was completed in 1859. It became famous for being part of the underground railroad. Even during the civil rights era, it played an important role as a refuge for activists, assembly, and protection.

First African Baptist Church

The First Six Founders are depicted on the glass windows behind the altar

The back of the church with the organ, activated manually

The day before, we had met on the street, Roberto Ochoa and the bass player, and they told us about a rooftop bar, the Perch, where you can see the whole city. So today, since it's Mardi Gras, we decided to check it out.
So worth it!

Day 59 - Savannah: Forsyth park, Colonial Park Cemetery, Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters

This morning we are ready to explore this town from top to bottom. I have my sneakers on and my google day trip planner on my phone. We need to get our steps in. 

Savannah's heart is a rectangular historical district, facing the Savannah river, starting from the river walk market, and growing south as the city got larger. At each addition, homes were added together with their own squares, which functioned as public spaces for communal kitchens and places of business. There are currently 22 squares, shaded by live oak trees covered by silvery Spanish moss, shading manicured gardens studded by blooming azaleas, all framing either a statue or a fountain.

This district is the largest National Historic Landmark District in the United States. The city has no skyscrapers, or even tall buildings. The streets are covered in cobblestones. Its colonial style homes ooze of history. Walking is the only way to see this city and this is the most relaxing walk you can have.  

We park around Forsyth park. We walk down on Whitaker Street. 

Live Oaks

Wright Square

We stopped by the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts of America.

We wondered around the Colonial Park Cemetery. 

The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist

We took the tour of the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters.
The house had been restored, through painstaking research on all the details, from the drapery to the wall paper and stairs runner. The slaves quarters had been restored and their story was told extensively.

We walked back to Forsyth park, and took some time by a monument dedicated to all the Confederate Soldiers who died during the civil war. I took several pictures. It might not be around next time 😉

Confederate Monument

By the end of the day I had done almost 19,961 steps, as recorded on my Google fit!

Day 58 - Savannah: Good Times Jazz Club

In 1994, the book "Midnight in the garden of good and evil" came out and it became the longest-standing New York Times Best-Seller. I estimated that it was right around then or maybe a year later before the movie came out that I read it. Well, that's how long I have been waiting to visit this town.
I got immediately sucked into the story and fell in love with this place.
I can't believe it, I am finally here, after travelling for almost two months across the states.
But we are exhausted and we need to do some house keeping, like laundry, grocery shopping, blogging and cat issues. Some unnamed cat is not happy with her litter box...
So we spent most of the day taking care of things.
Yesterday after the long trip from Okefenokee, we wondered around the river walk. It was really busy with folks enjoying the weekend with drinks and music in the many pubs along the Savannah river. We turned in early too tired to fight the crowd.

Today it's Sunday and it's the right time to celebrate and go out for a fancy dinner after running errands.
Hopefully the crowd has reduced. Folks need to go home and get ready for their working week. Come on, get a move on!

We chose a restaurant not far from the city market, Good Times Jazz Bar.
The food was excellent. I had pan-fried catfish with collard greens and Savannah red rice, Bill had the same but with a side dish of country butter beans and okra.
The jazz band was The Eric Jones Trio with jazz violinist Ricardo Ochoa.

It was the perfect thing to do for an amazing introduction to food and music.
Ochoa played several tracks and, before each, he gave us a small introduction about famous jazz violinists and their style. He told us stories about Eddy South, Stuff Smith and Stéphane Grappelli.
Then they just played jazz, some taking off known songs like 'You are the sunshine of my life' from Stevie Wonder. What a treat!

This video does not represent how well they play. Eric Jones. the bass player and the drummer are very talented musicians. I highly recommend this place and the band.

Day 57 - Stephen C Foster State Park to Savannah

The Biltmore RV park is no frills, in the sense that we got only the hookups, including cable with few channels. There are no bathrooms or laundry. It's by a busy road that gets noisy in the morning, but at night it's really quiet.
The best part is that it's only 10 minutes from downtown Savannah and you can come and go at your leisure, and the price is right.

Day 56 - Okefenokee Swamp: Stephen C Foster State Park, Billy's lake, Minnie's lake

When the weather man says that there is a 60% chance of rain, in California we take the news as a blessing and then dismiss it because in any case it's going to look like spits from the sky. Not the case in Georgia, especially if you are sitting in the middle of a swamp. But then again we are a middle-aged couple that has gone into a middle-age crisis together and have a passion not for danger but with pushing our luck! We are not going to tell the story about last summer when we almost... because we really wanted to do a ferrata in the middle of a thunder storm in the Dolomites.

Here the place is different but the story line is similar.

So today we went back to Millie's lake because I thought I didn't spend enough time inside that magical world since we had to return the kayak by 5 pm.

This time we rented a canoe. We first read the manual online to be good canoe mates and work together to have the best experience. That worked out really well: me at the bow as the power engine, and Bill at the stern as helmsman. I was to paddle and draw, he was to sweep and draw. We were cool, we were doing a great job...until it commenced to rain, actually it was more like someone had turned on a hose on us. Luckily we were able to get to the Minnie's lake shelter before we got too wet. So now we had to wait it out...for an hour. I can safely say that this time I had the chance to spend enough time in this magical world.

Stormy adventures is the way we roll!

Along the way, we were lucky to encounter many beautiful creatures including baby gators all bunched up together.

Barred Owl, no zooming involved in this picture

Never-wet flowers, the only member of the Orontium genus.

pond-cypress knees