4 Jun - Downtown Savannah Walk

 

Today we visited downtown Savannah.  Our campground has a shuttle service and for a nominal fee they will pick you up from your campsite, take you downtown to a pre-designated place and then pick you back up later.  We wove this in with Liberty going to the doggie spa for a shampoo, haircut and nail trim.  We had to have her there about 0800 hrs and the shuttle then picked us up at 0900 hrs.  It was a 45 minute drive downtown and the shuttle picked us up at 1200 hrs,  We had to pick Liberty up at 1300 hrs.  So that did not leave us a whole lot of time to loiter in downtown Savannah.     

One thing that helped us was we were the only ones on the 0900 hrs shuttle so our driver did us a huge favor and took us to our first stop, which was the furthest away.  Our first stop was "The Waving Girl" statue.  

This is a statue of Florence Martus who lived from 1869 to 1943.  The iconic statue is of this young woman waving a handkerchief  and greeting ships from the lighthouse on Cockspur Island, in search of her long lost lover.  Ships learned of this and popularity grew with many ship saluting her with a blast of the horn.  Many still do this to her statue,

From the statue we walked along Savannah's famous River Street.  As I mentioned before, I had been down to Savannah with the Air National Guard and River Street was always a favorite visit.  It is famous for the cobblestone street, the candy and sweets shops, taverns, restaurants and souvenir shops. 

Savannah's Candy Kitchen.  One of many here.

Cobblestone street and streetcar tracks remain

Some of the old architecture

A view along the river,  Tour boats depart from here also.

Very, very old steps - "use at your own risk"!!

Very old streets and alleys with cobblestone

 We continued to walk until we got to City Hall and the Savannah Visitor's Center, and then we made our way up to Bay Street.   From there we headed away from the river on Bull Street.  Our destination was Chippewa Square.  

Savannah was supposedly America's first "planned city".  General James Oglethorpe founded Savannah in 1733 and he designed the new capital with a series of neighborhoods centered around 24 squares, or parks. Originally there were 24 of them but now there are 22. Chippewa Square is where Tom Hanks, who plays the role of Forrest Gump, sits on a park bench for the majority of the film telling his life story to anyone who will listen.  The bench was just a movie prop and was reportedly moved into the Savannah History Museum.  We struggled to find the exact spot in Chippewa Square where the movie scenes were filmed. 

 Leaving Chippewa Square we headed back toward the river and passed this amazing church building, which is the Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, built in 1819.

Next stop was going to be Paula Deen's restaurant.  It was not yet open for the day but we grabbed a few pictures.

It was very warm and humid with rain coming later in the day, so we were ready for something cold, like maybe ice cream!  Savannah's famous ice cream shop is Leopold's.  We were disappointed it did not open until 1200 hrs and we have to be at our pickup point by then.  Drat!

As we walked towards our pickup point, we passed some buildings they have preserved that illustrate early days in Savannah.  Beautiful!

At our pickup point is a restaurant called Vinnie Van Gogo's , located in the City Market area.  They specialize in New York style pizza.  I could not think of a better place to wait for our ride!  We ordered a slice of pizza and drinks.  I had a Dos Equis Amber which really hit the spot

City Markey area

The pizza slices were massive.  

We enjoyed our tour of downtown Savannah on foot.  Doreen's iPhone showed almost 10,000 steps today with most of that downtown!  We definitely got our PT in today.  Unfortunately due to our time schedule our visit was too short.  You could easily spend an entire day or two down here, or more.

We spent the rest of the day back at the campground sanitizing our water system.  This is routine maintenance involving pumping in some water/bleach mixture and allowing it to sit overnight, then draining and flushing.  We had a sulphur smell coming from the hot water heater so we also changed the anode rod.  We should be good to go tomorrow.