Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There (Savannah, Georgia)

Welcome to my Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There Blog.

Today I’m heading to a gorgeous old city of the south—Savannah, Georgia.

Highlights:

Skidway Island Park campground. This was a lovely campground surrounded by a forest of trees draped in Spanish Moss. We visited the Interpretive Centre in the park where they had reptiles, a baby alligator, plus a bullsnake, which we held and tentatively patted. Bullsnakes are non-venomous constrictors, and this particular snake was a girl called Beau. Beau was rescued from a drug lab bust. Beau was hard case reptile and ended up threading herself through the the park rangers belt loops! 

Mrs Wilke's Dining room. Mrs Wilke's is a Savannah must see - popular with both tourists & locals. Mrs Wilke (who is now deceased) opened a boarding house in the 40's serving up traditional Southern home cooking. People eat around huge dining tables and pass dishes to each other, just like you would if in someone's home. We knew we were in the right place when we rounded the corner and could see the queue of people - luckily we had arrived early otherwise we could have been waiting a long time. Locals at our table told us sometimes the queue extends around the corner! Once inside we were shown to a dining room table that seated 8. The main meat for the day was fried chicken (yum) but there were heaps of bowls of other things (most that we couldn't identify, but it was fun tasting!), and I tried a little of everything. From what I could identify (or guess), we had cabbage, black eyed peas, squash, okra and tomatoes, green beans, baked beans & bacon, beef stew, macaroni cheese, cornbread, corn muffins and glasses of sweet iced tea. For desert there was banana pie or cherry cobbler. 

Chippewa square. Parts of the movie 'Forrest Gump' were filmed here, and after watching the DVD the night before, we tried to figure out where the park bench that Tom Hanks sat on would have been.

Carriage tour. The carriage was pulled by two draught horses (one white, called Charlie, and one brown called Justice). It was really nice just cruising in the carriage with the horse's hooves clopping. We wove in and out of the many Savannah squares (filled with lovely old oak trees and more Spanish Moss - except one, Wright Square I think, that doesn't grow the moss - local legend is it's because this square was used for executions...) and past historic buildings, while our tour guide entertained us with humorous stories and the history of the buildings and squares.

The accents. Oh my Lord, the southern accent just makes me go weak in the knees!

The heat. While I’m writing this the weather here isn’t the warmest. The day we visited Savannah the temperature was a humid 38 degrees and we were HOT. But the homemade ice cream from we bought from one of the stores cooled us off nicely.

There were plenty of other sights in Savannah that I would’ve loved to see, but we ran out of time. Truly a gorgeous and historic city, I’m looking forward to visiting again one day.

Tracey