Your history lesson for the day. Savannah was founded in 1773 and was the capital of the province of Georgia. It was laid out into 4 open square. It then later expanded into 22 square, which are like little parks all through out the city. There are still the big, old oak trees and cobblestone streets too. There are some stately old homes but many of their older homes were left to crumble and weren't restored. It costs a lot of money to restore an old building and add the water & heating & cooling that is necessary if you are going to open it to the public. The thing to do in Savannah is to take a horse and carriage ride around the city and see the historical buildings that are left. But our highlight and the main reason for going there was to go to Paula Deen's "Mother & Sons" restaurant. Paula Deen, is a cook with her own show on the Food Network. She was single mom raising two sons in Savannah and started her own restaurant. Now that she is famous, people come from all over to eat there. She isn't there cooking anymore but she still oversees it and they use her recipes. You have to get your reservation that morning at the restaurant and then we went back to eat lunch. It is three full floors of an old warehouse. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet and Bart did himself proud. I think he must have had a least 8 pieces of fried chicken. We all ate way too much and filled up on the chicken, plus mashed potatoes, biscuits & gravy, candied yams, black eyed peas, collar greens, creamed corn, hoe cakes, hush puppies, plus cobbler for dessert. Yum, yum!
We did go through one old restored home that had been a lovely, big house on a plantation once but then became the first school for blacks after the war and was now a Maritime Museum. It was interesting to see pictures of and learn about the different ship and vessels and the equipment on board. I learned a lot about sea life.
Here's a bit of seafaring trivia for the day:
Why did sailors wear such big, loose shirts? in case the fell overboard, they were easier to take off so that they didn't drown.
What is a binnacle? a heavy brass instrument used to know when the ship was level
Did you know that they used to bowl with big heavy metal 9 pins on the decks of ships to pass the time?
What is scrimshaw? carvings or etchings that sailors made in bone or ivory to pass the long hours. Boredom was a real issue on those year long sailing stints.
Do you know why we call the speed that a boat travels in knots? They used to tie knots in a long rope and throw it overboard. Then they would count the time that it would take to pull in the rope and count the number of knots they had passed.
There was lots of activity on the river. It would have been fun to take steam or paddle boat ride but we had limited amounts of time. Guess we'll have to go back someday!!!
While we were in the maritime museum, a bunch of young sailors in uniform started coming through. We discovered that they were young people from Denmark who had just landed there on the river and had crossed the ocean from Denmark in a beautiful sailing ship. They invited us down to the river front to tour their ship as it was going to be open to the public for just that afternoon. The ship was beautiful. They had spent much time getting it "spit shine" ready. It had taken 2 1/2 months to cross the ocean. These kids had applied, and paid money for this chance to be sailors on board. Kind of like a "sea study abroad". There were 75 of them, equal amounts of male & female, between the ages of 17-25. And they all spoke fluent English. We got to go all over the ship, from top to bottom. These kids were sleeping in hammocks that they had to put out and take down each day and night. They took turns doing all of the jobs on the ship. What an adventure.
We had an enjoyable day in Savannah. We were very lucky to have been there when the Danish ship was there. That added to our whole experience.
I am so glad that we wnet to eat at the lady and sons! I also loved seeing the sailors from Denmark and their ship-that made it even better.
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