Savannah, 1

Sometimes it's harder to blog about something you really like...you want to do it justice, you want other people to like it too. We really liked Savannah, the centro storico anyway, and much of the environs, spending 4 or 5 nights there. For persons in a smaller RV--ours is a 24 foot class B+--it was a very easy place to visit. There is free parking near the tennis courts at Forsyth park, in the historic district. And there is a free shuttle that circumnavigates the historic district every few minutes. A visitor's dream. But there was more to like than just the accommodations and transportation. The historic district is very well preserved, architecturally, and is otherwise interesting, and Savannah has done a good job with its interpretive signage, effectively conveying its long history, both the good and the not so good. There's little doubt we'll be back. Savannah is my mother's birthplace, and it is also where the Salzburger Scheraus's landed, way back in 1741, before moving to the colony up the river at Ebenezer. More of that in a later post.

At the tennis court parking...I kept thinking of the Tennis Court
Oath, but that's another matter (look it up)

The shuttle

In beautiful Forsyth Park, sort of Savannah's 
Central Park...many monuments, statues, etc.;
the old city features two dozen such parks, of
varying size, reminding us a bit of Georgian
London

Huge old oaks and Spanish moss everywhere

And azaleas, for which the city is famous

Central water feature

And then there are the 19th century mansions, everywhere...
this one the Armstrong Kessler mansion; many open to visitors

In another park, a monument to Revolutionary
War figure Casimir Pulaski, who died leading
the attempt to free Savannah of the Brits 

Mercer Williams House Museum; of Midnight in the Garden of
Good and Evil fame

Riding the shuttle, this sign comes into view...my branch of the
clan dropped the "A" and moved to Florida

Faux Gothic cathedral; no gallery, no glazed
triforium, no clerestory...beneath our standards

As in London, some of the cemeteries get filled up and are
eventually turned into parks; they have yet to clear out the
the headstones and smaller monuments in Savannah

Pushing up azaleas

Downtown...Savannah had one of the more successful civil
rights protests and boycotts of the 60s 

Three things to note here: the line for ice cream at Leopold's 
Ice Cream shoppe (we came back the next day); the art deco
theater next door; and SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and
Design, seemingly everywhere, and a real jewel in the city's
crown

John Wesley, founder of Methodism, preached
here

Yours truly at the Salzburger Park, commemorating
the Austrian exiles who came here throughout the 
mid 1700s; included the Scherauses

Monument of Reconciliation; a later Archbishop of Salzburg 
apparently said oops, sorry about that

Let me know if there's any talk of reparations

At the riverfront, bridges connecting old warehouses and such

Savannah River, Hutchinson Island in the background, and the
free water shuttle

Famous status of the "waving girl" who waved, thus, at passing

ships...for some sixty years

Looking up river toward what is said to be the 3rd largest port
in the country; the bridge leads to South Carolina

Ditto

Sherman famously "gave" Savannah to President Lincoln on
Christmas Day, 1864; not many monuments to Sherman here,
despite his having left Savannah fairly intact; compare Jackson
or Atlanta, some of the other cities visited by Grant's emissary
to the South