Oh, boy! Vacation!

Mark and I got home this afternoon after a wonderful vacation!  As great a time as we had, it feels good to be back home.  If you'd like to see some vacation pics, keep reading. :)

The first stop on our trip was Savannah, GA.  What a beautiful city.  There's so much history there, and all the restored historic houses, plus beautiful squares that are like mini-parks spread all throughout the historic district make Savannah special.  There are also lots of old, old live oaks with spanish moss hanging off the branches.  City leaders negotiated with Sherman to turn over the city without any gunfire in exchange for him not burning the town on his march to the sea, so many historic buildings remain.

Here's the oldest and therefore biggest live oak we saw:

The building in the back was a hospital during the Civil War.  According to a tour guide, the confederate soldiers were hospitalized here.  Union soldiers were "patched up" then put outside under this tree to recuperate.  The circumference of this tree is 16 feet!

Forsyth Park is so beautiful.  Here's a fountain in the park.

This is St. John's Episcopal Church.  We saw it one night while walking but didn't get to go inside. Gen Sherman spent Christmas here in 1863.  He was in Savannah that winter.

This is The Catherdral of St. John the Baptist. (Not to be confused with the Episcopal church above!)

These pics are from the graveyard at Colonial Park Cemetery.  The marker above says, "Here lyeth the body of Theodora Ash who passed this life February 17th, 1770 aged 17 years" I think the detail work of the flowers on the sides and scrollwork at the top are beautiful.  I couldn't read all of the bottom, but it starts out, "If innocence and virtue..."

The marker below says, "..?.daughter of William & Rebecca Pinder died July ? 1794..?." 

 

I was struck by how many of the gravestones were for people who died before the age of 30.  Most of them were only children.  There were also many graves of people who died from the yellow fever epidemic in the early 1820's.

One morning we had a delicious brunch at Clary's, made famous by the book & movie, "Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil".  We watched it again just before we left, and I found the book at the library and read it on the trip.  Here's Mark posing with his breakfast. :)

This is the Mercer-Williams house, where much of "Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil" was filmed. Mark took this pic from across the street in Monterey Square.  We took a tour of the house and saw the study where Jim Williams killed Danny Hansford. Some of Jim's family still lives in the top floor of the house and the first floor where we were remains much the same as it was when Jim died.

This may look like a mild mannered park, or even a parking lot.  But it's the Dueling Grounds where adversaries would stand back to back, walk 12 paces, then turn and shoot!  Yikes!  I guess that would be "winner take all" competition to the extreme.

The squares in Savannah are so beautiful.  There are 21 in all.  We ran across 3 different weddings over the weekend while we were there.  This bride arrived at the ceremony in a pedal taxi!

We spotted the Independent Presbyterian Church while walking, and decided to worship there on Sunday morning. I admit, I can be a tacky tourist.  Here's the inside which I shamelessly snapped pics of before the service started.  At least I turned off the flash! lol

 This is just a cute gutter ornament that I couldn't resist.

One of the last things we got to do was have lunch with a friend of mine from high school.  What fun to catch up with her!

Mark & I are eager to go back to Savannah some time.  We feel like we barely scratched the surface of this fantastic city. Have you ever been there?  What were your favorite sites?

Next stop, Charleston...stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by,
Nan