There’s nothing better than getting out of town to a warmer climate in the middle of winter. But sometimes the cold seems to follow you, doesn’t it?  A  few years ago, Curtis and I made plans to go to Savanah, Georgia, and that’s exactly what happened. 

When we first met, he was living in southwest Michigan, but shortly after, his career took him to the Detroit area. Long distance relationships stink, but also aren’t completely terrible because you really make the most of the weekends and holidays that you do get to spend together. We hadn’t been able to see each other for more than a couple of days at a time for several months, so we decided that we needed some quality time together. I love history and charming towns, so he suggested that we go to Savannah. He had been there before, and I had not, although I have always wanted to visit. We planned on leaving Christmas day, late in the afternoon, driving for a while and then stopping somewhere for the night. Temperatures hovered around 0° here at home when I left; lots of snow, ice, and drifts, with roads closing left and right – really, really ugly out. My dad even called to let me know that he saw that parts of the toll road was closing, and I’d better get on the road to go meet Curtis soon or I may be stuck in town. For some reason, we often get extreme weather and weird things happening when we travel; flash floods, blizzards, tornadoes (oddly enough, more than a few times), and even though it’s not weather, an actual riot. When we were in Scotland last fall, Queen Elizabeth died while she was actually in Scotland, not 100 miles from where we were.

We finally made it to Savannah. The roads improved the further south that we went but they too were having a cold snap. I was not prepared for this. Here I was thinking it would be 55° to 60° but it was actually in the very low 30’s.  I mean, at least it wasn’t zero, right?! We did make the most of it, though, as we often have to do. We’re pretty good at just rolling with whatever comes out way. Usually, that involves alcohol and lots of food.

On this trip, we took bicycles with us, and our plan was to see every single square in Savannah. If you aren’t familiar with Savannah, they built the city in a grid, which is broken up into squares that form wards, and the squares in the center are like parks in the middle of each ward, some have playgrounds, and many have fountains, etcetera, and each is named after a notable U.S. citizen. There are currently 22 squares after two were lost to alteration in the 20th century and couldn’t be restored. We thought biking was the fastest and most interesting way to get from one to the next.  Now, important to mention here is that I hadn’t been on a bike in years. Literally many years.   In addition to the squares, we wanted to go see the three famous cemeteries, because I love cemeteries, and especially historic ones. Colonial Park Cemetery is the smallest and right in town near the Savannah Historic District, so that was easy, but the other two, Laurel Grove and Bonaventure Cemeteries are both several miles out. The locals, for some reason, thought we were nuts to want to bike out there, but we were on an adventure, so we were determined. There happened to be a problem with the brakes on my bike, which made it extra hard to pedal, like I was going up a super steep hill, through mud and maybe sand. Also, my seat had no cushion left in it, so it was like using a very lumpy rock as a bike seat.  Curtis thought I was just complaining until he tried it out. It’s amazing what tools you can buy at a Savannah Dollar Store in a pinch to repair bike brakes. The seat issue, not so lucky with a solution there. I just had to suffer through it and suffer I did, with actual bruises on my butt. For days afterward. And I only fell one time, which surprised us both!

So, brakes repaired, we headed off again. We also decided that we would stop here and there along the way for a drink and a snack. Our favorite pub, The Six Pence Pub, right in town, had the best Bloody Mary’s.  Once we finally headed towards the cemeteries outside of Savannah, (and got lost multiple times because of my uncooperative GPS) it took us more than two hours to make it to Bonaventure Cemetery, the furthest, but prettiest cemetery. Riding bikes with a faulty GPS was rough. It’s only a 15-minute car ride there, so really, on bikes it should take only about 25 minutes, but ol’GPS zigzagged us down some questionable streets. Oddly, there were lots of car detailing places that smelled suspiciously of marijuana, which apparently, I am told, sometimes go together – who knew!?

Bonaventure Cemetery has a couple of headstones that were made semi-famous by the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was based on the true story of an infamous murder and trial that happened in Savannah. On our way down, we listened to the (audio) book by the same name by John Berendt and decided we wanted to go see the headstones from the book cover and film, in addition to it just being a really cool, historic cemetery dating back to the 1700’s. 

We even did the house tour at the Mercer-Williams House where said murder occurred in 1981 by the home’s most recent owner, James Williams, an antique dealer and historic preservationist. I love house tours, and this one did not disappoint.  The owner prior to Williams was Johnny Mercer, a famous Savannahian who wrote over 1,500 songs such as Moon River, AC-Cent Tchu–Ate the Positive, You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, and Jeepers Creepers, among so many others. He was also a co-founder of Capital Records and wrote songs for many famous singers in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. He happens to be buried at Bonaventure Cemetery as well.

One of our other favorite things to do is beach walk and look for cool rocks and fossils, because who doesn’t need lots and lots of rocks in their house?! It turns out that beaches down south have more shells than rocks, but we heard that the beach on Tybee Island has shark teeth, so we headed out to look for those. We didn’t find any, but that was the best weather day of the whole trip. It was gorgeous, sunny, and quite a bit warmer, so we found a nice spot and took a little nap on the beach which we also love to do. I love the sound of the waves and seagulls and the feel of the fresh breeze. We had lunch at The Original Crab Shack and the shrimp boil was amazing and exactly what a shrimp boil should be.

Savannah is a gorgeous city. It has a small town feel but has so much to do to keep you busy for several days. Next week travel along with us for a couple of days in London. If you liked this post, please share and subscribe!