Savannah Photos: Part 4

This post contains all the photos I posted over on our food blog this week.  I thought about just giving you the link, but I wanted to keep all the Savannah posts together, as a collection.

Where I didn't go - Paula Deen's Lady & Sons restaurant.  Sorry!  But the wait was hours long, and we weren't even hungry when we still had a chance to get in line.  Later, when we went by, the line was for the bar only and didn't budge an inch in the 20 minutes we stood there.  I decided that I'd have to be content with photos of the outside, and we wandered off to do more sightseeing.

This is the line to get your name on the list for dinner five hours later.

The Pirates House is on the list for must-see in Savannah.  It's the oldest house in Georgia, and they built a restaurant around it.  Click-zoom to read the place mat photos below for all kinds of awesome history.

The place mats actually had a lot more history and stories than our guide mentioned:

(click to zoom and read)

It doesn't get much more Southern than sweet tea, fried pickles, and a biscuit with peach jelly.

  I ordered a crab cake sandwich that was messy and delicious.

Let me first remind everyone that I'm currently not eating sugar.  I decided that I would absolutely splurge on one sugar-laden treat for the weekend.  So, when I saw this sign, I immediately ducked into the shop before Bo even realized that I was gone.

This guy making pralines gave me a sample!

I bought one of these for Bo - who would be buried in caramel, chocolate, and pecans, if given the option - and I had to put up the biggest fuss before he agreed to let me try a tiny bite of it.

White and milk chocolate covered marshmallows, on a stick, with sprinkly toppings.  Why have I not made these yet??

One block down the waterfront was another candy shop:

With its own guy making pralines.

But!  The huge, big, major difference is that this shop smelled like heavennnnn.  Have you ever smelled warm caramel and roasted pecans and loads and loads of melted butter??  Add that to your bucket list, because holy goodness, it was to.die.for.  After getting mildly drunk off the scent, I rushed outside to shriek at Bo to get in there and smell it.

We considered all the popular, go-to places, and I read hundreds of reviews and lists recommending where to eat in Savannah.  But after all the fried fish and slaw and sandwiches, I was craving Italian food slathered in red sauce.  I picked a casual place called Leoci's, with a back patio strung in twinkly lights.  It was perfect.  We sat near a fan, under this twinkly tent, and instantly relaxed.  It was definitely our kind of place to eat (it's dog friendly, even!).

Bo ordered a delicious house wine, and as usual, I opted for a glass of something bubbly.

Leoci's makes their pasta fresh daily, and if you ever go, order the lasagna.  It was the most amazing lasagna I've ever tasted.  Ever ever ever in the whole wide world.

(Sorry for the blurry photo.  By this point, Bo was tired of my stealing his plate and mucking with my phone's camera settings to take eighteen hundred photos of his meal.)  Turns out that the lasagna is ten layers of their fresh pasta, with very little cheese between the layers.  But it is heavenly creamy in your mouth.  Something about their homemade pasta is incredibly creamy and almost puffy.  I must have it again.  Must.

As amazing as those candy shops smelled, I'm just not a huge fan of pralines or fudge (add that to the list of reasons I'm one day getting kicked out of the South).  You see, for me, the very best sugar indulgence involves cake and piles of fluffy buttercream frosting.  So, we visited a late night dessert shop called Lulu's.

A golden yellow cake with fresh strawberry buttercream.  It was four hundred percent worth the splurge and worth the wait for sugar.  And yes, I ate it while sitting in our hotel bed, under the covers.

p.s. A week later, and I'm still thinking about that lasagna.


      

Savannah Photos: Part 3

Savannah's Colonial Park Cemetery was established in 1750 and was closed for burials before the Civil War even began.  (But, Savannahans would like you to know that Federal - read: Yankee - soldiers looted the cemetery, camped out in the larger tombs, and changed the dates on several of the gravestones.)  

This is the biggest Magnolia Tree I've seen in my entire life.

Sacred. 

I never realized that Crape Myrtle Trees were so beautiful.

The east wall of the cemetery is constructed of brick and errant tombstones.  Over the years, and through Civil War occupancies, the cemetery's gravestones were moved around.  The result is that thousands of grave sites are missing their stones.  Some were built into the back wall as a way to preserve them.

If you zoom to read this stone, you'll see that Joseph Muir was 11 years old when he died.  His wife was 17, and their son was 12.  Huh?  This is an example of the pranks that Sherman's soldiers played while they camped out in the cemetery during the Civil War.

This is a strip of park just over the south fence of the cemetery.  At the other end is a playground, but know what this once was?   Dueling grounds.  Men paced off in this exact grassy field and dueled with swords and later, with pistols.  I think it's hilarious that the City of Savannah has turned it into a park with a children's playground.  Whatever the history, it's beautiful, like everything else in the city.

Savannah Photos: Part 2

The historic downtown district of Savannah was built - like many other old cities - along the riverfront, where it's still one of the country's busiest shipping ports.  

Did I mention that Rory came with us?  She's seriously the best road-tripper.  All she asks is that I share my french fries and let her sleep on the hotel bed.  (She's relegated to a dog bed every other night, but vacation mode means I let her sleep on a real, albeit uncomfortable, bed.)

At the street level are a lot of shops and restaurants and places to buy trinkets.

But what I was most interested in was the upper floors of these old buildings.  I was dying to see what they looked like on the inside and how they'd fared two hundred years in existence.  Do people still live up on those floors?  Are there relics from forever ago?  Could I find photos of the insides of the apartments in Craigslist rental listings?  Such are the ways my conniving and scheming brain works.

Every so often a gap between the buildings would reveal an alley-like walkway leading to a steep set of stairs.  I tried to capture how steep all the stairways were down at the waterfront, but I just couldn't.  But they were so steep that I had to watch my footing while wearing flats, and I assume many, many poor folks fell to an untimely death after having a bit too much hard cider and trying to navigate those stairs.

Looking down the same set of the crazy steep stairways.  There is a set of stairs, then the landing you can see with a trash can, then another set of stairs.  Now look back to the photo above to picture that.  And wave hello to the family I accidentally caught in my photo!

Awwww, Stinks* :)

* aka Rory
   aka Missy
   aka Little Miss
   aka Poopsie Lou
   aka Smellers
   aka The Mongrel
   aka Broken Sniffer

   aka Lona

   aka ....

Yes, I have a problem.  And I fear for my future children.