4-day weekend road trip
Mar. 30th, 2003 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serenissimaChris flew into town Thursday morning, and we started the drive to Savannah directly from the airport. We stopped for lunch in Macon since it's the biggest city along the way, but in 20 minutes or so of wandering around we couldn't find a nice place to eat. We ended up at Wendy's. We checked into our motel 15 miles outside Savannah late that afternoon. After getting our stuff situated, we decided to drive into the city and take a look at what we might want to see the next day, since pretty much all the tourist stuff had already closed for the day. We started by getting lost in a storm -- there was a tornado watch that evening. We eventually found the historic district and the visitors' center, returned to the motel, made a fruitless attempt to get Chinese food delivered (apparently they don't deliver that far out), and ordered pizza.
Friday and the rest of the weekend had gorgeous, warm, sunny weather. We reached the historic district late in the morning and made a beeline for the visitors' center. We stopped at an art museum and looked at their temporary exhibit for a little while: ornately decorated antique watches. I got hungry, so we had lunch at terrific little sandwich-and-ice cream shop, feeling lucky to have found it in the middle of some pricier restaurants, and poked around in a few other shops. One had a resident pug whom we had to say hello to, of course. We returned to the art museum for a guided tour. It's a small museum but has some nice stuff. Finally, we toured a large historic house restored to its late 19th century condition. I think its biggest claim to fame may have been that the Marquis de Lafayette stayed there for some time after the Revolutionary War.
On Saturday we went to Tybee Island. I bought a kite and flew it on the beach, which seemed clean and pretty enough. A bunch of people were surfing -- I've never seen many surfers before, but then I haven't often been to a beach. We went to the Tybee Island Museum, which is housed in an old gun battery, and we would have climbed up the lighthouse, but there was a long wait and we decided we were tired.
After lunch we went to Fort Pulaski National Monument, which turned out to be the highlight of the trip. It's a large, sturdy fort built on its own little island in the 1840s, I think, under the direction of Robert E. Lee. It was defeated during the Civil War by Union gun batteries shooting from Tybee Island, most importantly by cannons with rifled barrels, which showed that forts were obsolete. The walls are something like 10 feet thick, and though Union soldiers repaired the section of the wall that got blasted through, there are still craters in the walls facing Tybee. Once they took it over, the Union made it a prison for a while, and there's a little story about how five Confederate prisoners almost broke out: they would have made it except that one lost his nerve and turned himself in to the guards, who caught the rest. All in all, a very cool place to visit.
We didn't do much Sunday. Chris came with me to church at the (also historic) cathedral, which I would have liked to tour earlier but maybe we'll go back some day. We had a yummy brunch at a bakery near River Street, wandered among the shops for about an hour, and made the drive back to the airport. If there had been less to do in Savannah, maybe we would have come back earlier and I could have shown him my house. We'll have to do that another time.
Friday and the rest of the weekend had gorgeous, warm, sunny weather. We reached the historic district late in the morning and made a beeline for the visitors' center. We stopped at an art museum and looked at their temporary exhibit for a little while: ornately decorated antique watches. I got hungry, so we had lunch at terrific little sandwich-and-ice cream shop, feeling lucky to have found it in the middle of some pricier restaurants, and poked around in a few other shops. One had a resident pug whom we had to say hello to, of course. We returned to the art museum for a guided tour. It's a small museum but has some nice stuff. Finally, we toured a large historic house restored to its late 19th century condition. I think its biggest claim to fame may have been that the Marquis de Lafayette stayed there for some time after the Revolutionary War.
On Saturday we went to Tybee Island. I bought a kite and flew it on the beach, which seemed clean and pretty enough. A bunch of people were surfing -- I've never seen many surfers before, but then I haven't often been to a beach. We went to the Tybee Island Museum, which is housed in an old gun battery, and we would have climbed up the lighthouse, but there was a long wait and we decided we were tired.
After lunch we went to Fort Pulaski National Monument, which turned out to be the highlight of the trip. It's a large, sturdy fort built on its own little island in the 1840s, I think, under the direction of Robert E. Lee. It was defeated during the Civil War by Union gun batteries shooting from Tybee Island, most importantly by cannons with rifled barrels, which showed that forts were obsolete. The walls are something like 10 feet thick, and though Union soldiers repaired the section of the wall that got blasted through, there are still craters in the walls facing Tybee. Once they took it over, the Union made it a prison for a while, and there's a little story about how five Confederate prisoners almost broke out: they would have made it except that one lost his nerve and turned himself in to the guards, who caught the rest. All in all, a very cool place to visit.
We didn't do much Sunday. Chris came with me to church at the (also historic) cathedral, which I would have liked to tour earlier but maybe we'll go back some day. We had a yummy brunch at a bakery near River Street, wandered among the shops for about an hour, and made the drive back to the airport. If there had been less to do in Savannah, maybe we would have come back earlier and I could have shown him my house. We'll have to do that another time.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-31 02:49 am (UTC)I'm always amused by what young countries consider historic, though. Many people in the UK live in houses older than that one you visited. ;)
Good choice in music, as well!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-31 10:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-31 03:05 pm (UTC)