Savannah

Day 38

We are now in beautiful Savannah the 13 colony and 4^th busiest port in America.  It has 100 year old oak trees lining the streets and  so much history.  Our hotel is in Ellis Square with its city markets, restaurants and only 2 blocks from the waterfront with its bars, arts, river boats and monuments. 

It has beautiful monuments for the founders, the civil war, and a globe which is broken in 2 depicting the world torn in half during the second world war.  They also have a monument to the Vietnam Veterans.

They are famous for people such as Johnny Mercer (who wrote many well known songs such as Moon River), Academy Award winner Charles Coburn,  Juliette Gordon Low (founder of the Girl Scouts) and iconic restaurateur  Paula Deen .

 Quite a number of movies have been filmed here including Forrest Gump and we visited places featured in that movie including the park bench, the school and streets where he ran etc.

They have stories dating back centuries including a dueling ground; which is conveniently situated right next to the cemetery.  When redesigning the roads they found this cemetery was much bigger than initially thought and there were numerous bodies discovered under the roads and buildings of Savannah which has helped earn it the reputation of the “Most haunted city in America”.   

On the waterfront there is a statue of a lady who was engaged to a sailor and he promised he would return.  She said that she would come down to the waterfront every day and wave her apron to the ships as they came in until he returned.  Story had it she stood and waved for 40 years until she realized he was not returning.

We visited Madison Square wher General Sherman concluded his ""March to the Sea.  Savannah was lucky that the city was not burned as were previous town's due to the fact that the troops had already fled and the people all surrended.  This means all the pre civil war buildings are still standing and preserved. 

Tonight we are off to another show.