Savannah, Georgia

Alex & I spent an amazing weekend in Savannah, Ga back in November. I am just a little late with this post. The initial motivation behind our trip was to visit a childhood friend of Alex & Bryans. Travis (aka Captain Krug) is stationed at Fort Stewart anxiously awaiting the completion of his service to this country. He lives just outside Savannah with his lovely wife Annie and their new adorable son Finley. Bryan & Jane were planning a trip out there so we decided to coordinate our trips. When deciding on our mode of transportation, we threw around the idea of taking the train. Alex & I have become big train advocates since living in the Northeast, in addition to all other alternative modes of transport. Upon further investigation we discovered you can rent a “roomete” on Amtrak for overnight trips. I was sold, sleeping on a train in my own little compartment, too cool! The train tickets were comprable to a plane ticket, plus an extra $150 for the room, which we justified by thinking we would have to rent a hotel room for the same price if we arrived in the evenning anyway. Plus the pain and suffering of air travel would be avoided. All we had to do was take the subway to Penn Station, hop on our train and 15.5hrs later we would be in Savannah. The price of our tickets included dinner and breakfast in the dining car and our fabulous little room, equipped with sink and toilet in addition to our bunk beds. I claimed the top bunk and struggled to sleep through the excitement of our train adventure. We left Penn Station (NYC) around 3:15pm and early the next morning at 6:45am, we pulled into the station at Savannah. Train travel is definately the way to go. Far more enjoyable then dealing with the security, delays, and hassles of air travel. Now if we could just figure out this ban on bikes situation we would be huge Amtrak supporters.
Due to the early arrival time of our train, Alex & I had much of the morning to explore Savannnah before Bryan & Jane arrived in the afternoon.
As I am a big fan of the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt, I was already somewhat familiar with the town of Savannah. For those of you who have not read the book or seen the movie, starring John Cusack and Kevin Spacy, I’ll give a brief explanation. The book is written by a nyc journalist who went to Savannah and fell in love with the quirky charm and spent many years there. While he was living there a man, Jim Williams shot and killed his young boy lover in his grand home, the Mercer House on Monterey Square, shown in the photo to the left. The majority of the book describes the charm of the town and all the eccentric characters he meets while living there. Of course, this meant I had to go visit the Mercer House. Once Bryan & Jane arrived we took a tour of the inside of the home, where Jim William’s sister still lives to this day. The town of Savannah is divided into 21 squares, which are basically big garden roundabouts every few blocks. The historic distric is quite small and very easy to navigate when wandering around town. Bryan had arranged a rental home for the weekend and once they arrived we were able to settle into our wonderful little apartment which was directly across the street from The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. An amazing location with a wonderful little balcony that served us well during the Veterans Day Parade, which started in front of the cathedral.
Our friends Annie, Travis, & Finley soon arrived to wander the streets with us and join us for dinner. Finley was just born at the end of August, making him just under 3 months when we were there, but by the look of him you’d think he was closer to 6 months. It looks like Finley is going to be a big boy like his daddy.

We had a wonderful visit with everyone and plenty of time to explore the intriquing town of Savannah. We took a ghost tour one night, a barbeque at the Krugs another evening where I tried alligator tail and kicked Alex’s butt at ping pong, and enjoyed the Veterans Day Parade from our balcony. We stopped at Wormsloe Plantation, but due to limited time just took this cool pictures and then were on our way.

I can’t forget to mention Sammie and Cooper, a Sharpei and a Boxer who are members of the Krug Family. As many of you know I am crazy for dogs as is Alex, so we spent much of our time rolling around on the floor with the dogs. I think they were enjoying the attention. Bryan & Jane had to leave early Monday, but our train didn’t leave Savannah until 7pm so we got to spend the day with the Krugs. They took us to Fort Stewart, the base where Travis is stationed, and showed us around the area. When it was time for us to leave, I didn’t have to dread all the hassles of air travel. We were dropped off at the train station, settled into our little room on the train, had some dinner, went to sleep, and the next morning we were back in the city. How can you not love the train!

Bryan, Jane, Annie, Travis, Finley, me, & Alex

The Boys