A WEEK IN SAVANNAH - PART TWO

Well, now, where do ya'll want to go today?  Let's put on our good walking shoes and head out again to see more of this beautiful old city...

Head on over past Troupe Square towards Lafayette Square and you will find the childhood home of writer, Flannery O'Connor.  Born in Savannah in 1925, Miss O'Connor lived in this house until 1938.  




A prolific short-story writer, she said, "Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one."  Miss O'Connor was a devout Catholic and I imagine the sight of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, right across the square, gave her much pleasure.

Let's go on west towards Madison Square, then head south on Bull Street.  Now this, of all the houses in Savannah, was my favorite.  Why?  Well, if there was ever a house that was really haunted in Savannah, it would be this one, housing Alex Raskin Antiques, it was full of interesting and old things (barely enough room to walk around) and just look at the all the interesting and spooky details of the house and surroundings...

The house looked a little worse for wear, not updated and fixed up to be so pretty.  I liked that about it, and the iron details of the balcony on the second floor with the iron fence and the rusty-colored surrounds of the windows just made me want to poke around and look at more things.  

Is that a woman in the window?  Or is it something else?












Well, enough of this.  Let's go back to the car and drive down to the river and see what there is to see...

Not exactly easy to find a spot to park even with all the meters that take quarters or credit cards...driving around and around and over and under, finally found River Street and walked up and across to the Cotton Exchange building, which looked interesting.  Now the home of Solomon's Masonic Lodge Number One, it was built in 1887 (Savannah and Liverpool, England were the only two places in the world where the price of cotton was quoted.)  On the other side and down to River Street (the building incorporates "air rights" as it is constructed over the Drayton Street ramp that descends to the river), you can see the dock where cotton was loaded onto barges on the Savannah River.

Sorry, but I didn't take a photo of Emmett Park or the Celtic Cross in the park.  I think I may have been getting tired and hot, and ready for a rest.

And time to head outside of Savannah to more natural surroundings.  One afternoon we drove out to Tybee Island to meet with Dr. Joe Richardson who leads a beach walk and exploration each day.  Dr. Richardson has done work and study on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas and has taken students and teachers there for research (this is the same place Sweetie goes to each year at least once to do research on his cave critters).  We met right across from the Tybee Lighthouse and walked down a boardwalk to the beach to begin our exploration (along with one other family of four).

The beach where we wandered, digging up various interesting and small critters, including a mole crab (cutest little thing with a pale blue underbelly); and I found a really big horseshoe crab in the black rocks at the jetty, which Dr. Joe said was a great find at this time of year.  

The top photo of the lighthouse was taken from the beach side through the seagrass.  

The second photo of the lighthouse was taken right across the street from it in the parking lot outside.  I like the red roofs of the buildings playing off the white and black colors everywhere else.

Since it was a cloudy day (in fact, we thought we'd get rained out), I didn't put on a bit of sunscreen and came home with a red neck!