(If you click on a picture it will get bigger.)
We started the day walking around the lower part of the historic district to City Market where we booked a horse and buggy ride. It was fun with our driver / guide Michelle and Teddy the horse. This city is dripping with history and stories.
We learned that when Savannah was founded by General James Oglethorpe he did not allow drinking (because he got into legal trouble after getting drunk and roudy), no Catholics (because Catholic Spain was coming up from Florida trying to take more land and he figured any Catholic would be sympathetic to other Catholics so ban them all. Kind of like banning all Muslims in case one might be a terrorist.), no lawyers (because he hired a lawyer to represent him in a dispute and the day of the trial the lawyer had better things to do and didn't show up, so who needs 'em?) and he was extremely anti-slavery, so no slaves. Well, now you can walk all over the historic district with a drink in your hand - so much for no liquor. After the French helped win the Revolutionary War some of them wanted to move here and they were Catholic so the city fathers decided it was okay. Later the Irish Catholics came too. In fact the second largest St. Patrick's Day parade is here - bigger than Boston or Chicago! Who knew! This year they had 350 marching bands and over 15,000 people IN the parade!! There are plenty of lawyers here so that ban was lifted at some point. And once cotton became king, slavery wasn't banned any more.
Many houses have balconies and porches but no doors to get to them. Back in the 1700s, property here was taxed by the number of doors and closets. So houses have no closets, and instead of doors to the balconies, they installed tall windows that could be opened and crawled out of to avoid the door tax.
One of the houses is the pink house - it was a red brick house and the owner wanted it to look like stone (a much more expensive prestigious house) so he plastered it over and carved the plaster to look like stone. But the red came through the plaster in splotches making it look pink polka-dotted so he had to keep painting and plastering it. They said since he had to keep painting and plastering, it would have cost him less to build a stone house in the first place.
Forrest Gump sat on a bench here eating chocolates and telling about his life. They put a replica on that corner but it kept getting stolen so there's another one somewhere that we've not seen yet.
After the ride, we walked down "the stone stairs of death" as the locals call them - really old cement stairs down to the waterfront where we walked a bit and had lunch.
Our parking meter was nearly expired, so we drove to Tybee Island - Savannah's beachfront - and walked along where the shops are and on to the pier.
On the way back we stopped at our Roadside America of the Day stop - the Fish Art Gallery, the folk art environment / gallery / store of Ralph Douglas Jones, a retired North Dakotan, who turns junk into art. This guy collected junk from wherever he can find it and makes "art".
Tonight we went on a ghost walk. Savannah is said to be the most haunted city in the country. We walked around several squares and learned about a lot of beautiful old houses who have ghosts. The Davenport House, the first to be restored, has a ghost person AND a ghost cat, a yellow tabby who they say wandered in one day and never left. Even the CVS Pharmacy downtown only stays open until 9 because no one wants to be there later. The building used to be the jail and sits on the square where the gallows was, and something seems to be living in the basement. Our guide Michelle (not the same Michelle from this morning) told us to examine all our photos when we get home to see if we've photographed something other-worldly.
Many of the porch ceilings and even ceilings inside are painted "haint blue". There was a colony of slaves from Angola who believed in "haints" which were really really bad spirits. They also believed that haints wouldn't cross water, so the slaves mixed indigo and buttermilk to make a color they called haint blue to paint their doorways and later ceilings, so the haints would think it was water and wouldn't cross. Sherwin Williams even has a haint blue color.
After the tour we walked past Paula Dean's restaurant to Sorry Charlie's Oyster Bar, 116 Congress, between Johnson and Ellis Squares and had crab cakes and fish tacos. Yum!!
Savannah and Tybee Island
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Savannah, Georgia, United States
Other Entries
-
1Plan B - Georgia and the Carolinas Road Trip
Apr 094 days priorCordova, United Statesphoto_camera3videocam 0comment 5 -
2Jekyll Island
Apr 121 day priorSavannah, United Statesphoto_camera15videocam 0comment 4 -
3Savannah and Tybee Island
Apr 13Savannah, United Statesphoto_camera31videocam 0comment 8 -
4More Amazing Savannah
Apr 141 day laterSavannah, United Statesphoto_camera25videocam 0comment 2 -
5South Carolina Low Country
Apr 152 days laterCharleston, United Statesphoto_camera20videocam 0comment 8 -
6Easter Sunday
Apr 163 days laterCharleston, United Statesphoto_camera19videocam 0comment 2 -
7Mount Pleasant and Charleston Harbor
Apr 174 days laterCharleston, United Statesphoto_camera21videocam 0comment 2 -
8On the Beach
Apr 185 days laterMyrtle Beach, United Statesphoto_camera34videocam 0comment 6 -
9Relaxin' at the Beach
Apr 196 days laterMyrtle Beach, United Statesphoto_camera25videocam 0comment 4 -
10Just another day in paradise
Apr 207 days laterMyrtle Beach, United Statesphoto_camera20videocam 0comment 0 -
11Cape Fear
Apr 218 days laterWilmington, United Statesphoto_camera34videocam 0comment 2 -
12Leaving the coast
Apr 229 days laterDurham, United Statesphoto_camera24videocam 0comment 0 -
13Lazy Sunday
Apr 2310 days laterDurham, United Statesphoto_camera15videocam 0comment 1 -
14A Visit to Mayberry
Apr 2411 days laterAsheville, United Statesphoto_camera26videocam 0comment 2 -
15Showing off
Apr 2512 days laterAsheville, United Statesphoto_camera45videocam 0comment 2 -
16Costumes at Biltmore
Apr 2512 days laterAsheville, United Statesphoto_camera23videocam 0comment 2 -
17Traveln' on the Trolley
Apr 2613 days laterAsheville, United Statesphoto_camera31videocam 0comment 4 -
18Back in Tennessee
Apr 2714 days laterChattanooga, United Statesphoto_camera22videocam 0comment 4 -
19Travelin' on the Trolley Two
Apr 2815 days laterChattanooga, United Statesphoto_camera58videocam 0comment 2 -
20National Cornbread Festival
Apr 2916 days laterSouth Pittsburg, United Statesphoto_camera36videocam 0comment 2
Comments

2025-02-10
Comment code: Ask author if the code is blank
DIMITRIS
2017-04-14
MARAVILLOSAS FOTOS... LOS ENVIDIO, OBVIAMENTE EN EL BUEN SENTIDO DE LA PALABRA. CARIÑOS DESEÁNDOLES QUE LO SIGAN PASANDO MARAVILLOSAMENTE BIEN.
DIMITRIS
Etta Covey McFarland
2017-04-14
I think Savannah is one of the most beautiful cities in the country. It's funny, your plan B trip is similar to the plan B trip Clay and I took three years ago!
Jeff
2017-04-14
"Our guide ... told us to examine all our photos when we get home to see if we've photographed something other-worldly." That doesn't work with digital cameras. You must use film -- the ghosts appear during the developing process. All ghosts know this, and they are upset because they are slowly going into oblivion.
mike wess
2017-04-14
I have been to Savanah several times. Love it!
Susie
2017-04-15
"Haints" is a cultural word for things that haunted. Kind of like up here, y'all is replaced with "y'uns" a contraction of you ones instead of you all. We have friends in Memphis who have a home on Tybee Island. We keep threatening to visit them there.
Juda
2017-04-15
I see all these beautiful houses have their entrances above street level, so you have to climb stairs. It must be hard for disabled people to live in them. Also, I pity the poor mail carriers!