Summer Vacation 2007 - Day 2

Day Two- Savannah, GA

Three things I learned today in Savannah - by Darcy (8 yrs. old)

1. There are a lot of horses pulling carriages.

2. The waving girl died of a heartbroken.

3. Eat seafood!!

Three things I learned today in Savannah - by Madison (Ten yrs. old)

1. The waving girl statue was about a girl who stood at the Savannah River and waved a towel to the passing boats. She was waiting for her true love to return by ship. After 4 years, when he didn't return, she died of a broken heart.


2. Eli Whitney came to a plantation in Savannah to tutor the owner's three children. He invented the cotton gin, which picked the seeds from the cotton. It was an invention easily duplicated, so he only sold three of them before other people copied his design.

3. Georgia is known as the Peach State

Before we left Florida, I researched Savannah, a place I've always wanted to visit since reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. One of the things I found was a trolley tour that would take you through 16 stops around the city. You can ride the trolley all day, getting on and off as many times as you choose. Although my husband scoffed at this as he prefers to walk everywhere he goes, we agreed this would be easier for my mother and the children.

The lady at the front desk of our hotel suggested riding the trolley all the way through first, picking out the destinations that would interest us, and returning to debark at said destinations on the second go around. We took her advice.

Our tour guide was Terry. He was an older black gentleman with a sense of humor and quite a bit of knowledge about the city. He had his script and his schtick well-rehearsed. We started out at the Welcome Center and began touring the city.

The city of Savannah is ancient. It was established in the 1700s by James Oglethorpe, a member of Parliament. Savannah prospered with the discovery that certain crops did quite well in the humid heat of Georgia. These crops were rice, cotton, and peaches. Savannah was successfully captured by General Sherman during the Civil War. Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln, offering him the city of Savannah as a Christmas present, making it one of the few towns not burned by Sherman during the war.

There were several war monuments around the different 24 squares that the city was built around. One of the statues was commissioned from Canada. The city requested that the finished statue be delivered by ship so that it did not touch any Yankee land in its trip to its final resting place. The figure was then put in the square facing the enemy, north.

Other interesting points of interest in Savannah are the homes of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. Her birthplace and the house that she lived in after her marriage are two points of interest in any tour, as is the first house of the Girl Scouts. We skipped her birthplace, which is next door to a famous bed and breakfast that once housed Kevin Spacey while he filmed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." and instead opted to check out the home of Andrew Low II, Juliette's father in law.

Inside the home is a little tourist shop where we watched program detailing old Andrew's life, and by the time it was over, we were doubled over from all of the tragedy that kept striking, not Andrew, but all the women in his life. It was worse than any soap opera.

Andrew married his first wife, and the two of them began work on building this mansion in Savannah, but before they could move in their four-year-old son died, his wife died in childbirth, and his uncle and partner in the cotton industry croaked as well. Poor William moved into this house with his two young daughters and eventually remarried. This wife bore him 5 children, one of whom died right after birth. You would think he would have learned by now to stay the hell away from his wife, but obviously, he was a horn dog because he knocked her up again, and she died during labor just like his first wife!! Connie and I were laughing and crying by the time that miserable saga was finished.

Andrew's son eventually inherited the house, married Juliette Gordon, and moved into the house. Their marriage was a miserable one (of course) because, on the day of their wedding, rice was thrown. Rice landed in Juliette's ear and gave her an infection that resulted in her going deaf. You can imagine where Connie and I were when that was told. Seriously....on the floor. On and on this history went.

We saw the Mercer house, the house in the book and movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. We saw the third oldest hospital ever built. We saw the cemetery where Confederate soldiers are buried. We heard of ghosts that inhabit several of the famous houses that line each square. We passed church after church after church. We finally got out at St. John's Baptist Church.

It was built in the 1800s but had recently been restored. We went inside and toured the church. It is beautiful with stained glass windows depicting stories from the Bible, large marble columns, intricate architecture, and starting on one side and circling the entire church are enclaves of the Easter scene of Jesus' trip to the altar where he was nailed to the cross.

Tom began explaining this to Madison, so I turned to Darcy and began teaching it to her. We started at the beginning and went all around the church with me trying to summarize the whole thing, and when I finished at the cross, Darcy looked at me and said:

Darcy: "But I thought Jesus was Santa Claus."

The homes are amazing; old and built exceptionally well. Each is a different architectural masterpiece. We couldn't begin to even see the whole city on our tour. I would have loved to have just walked the town reading every piece of information that is available on signs throughout, but the kids weren't all that enthralled, and Connie could not begin to do that walking.

We ate at a cafe in the Marketplace, and while in the Andrew Low house, it began to rain again. We waited it out for a while (that is how we came to watch the film on his life) and then decided to walk next door to the carriage house that Juliet had turned into the Girl Scouts headquarters. As we exited the Low house, it poured, and we hurried to the office only to find that the door was locked. But for three dollars apiece we could get inside. Yeah, because those Girl Scouts don't sell enough cookies in February and March!

We left and began hiking toward our car. We got as far as the overhang of another church (no entry allowed) where we waited while Tom ran the rest of the 3 blocks to retrieve our car. We were soaked to the skin, but glad we'd made the trip.

Day two ended with dinner at the Cracker Barrel (Connie stayed at the hotel) and a game of Hearts (I won!). Tomorrow we head to South Carolina to visit relatives and tour Charleston.