I think we’re going to make this our online Christmas card. If you receive this in your inbox just know we ran out of stamps.
That’s in Savannah’s City Market. I saw some pictures of this area in a museum earlier in the day. The modern place looks a bit different than the 19th and turn-of-the-20th century market. There is less cotton and other crops and far more tourists now.
Still have horses, though they now are part of the tourist trade, carrying around people in carriages. And also eating ducks. Who knew?
Savannah, it seems to us, feels less festively decorated this year. We’ve been walking through the historic districts under overcast skies and in several layers of clothing wondering where all of the extra lights and garland are. My guess is that they cut back on the manpower budget to hang it all.
Still a lovely city. Always is. At least in our experience. For a place that sells so much of itself on ghosts and deaths and the more sordid parts of its history you can’t find a much more charming place, even if the Christmas atmosphere is down.
There are less people here right now, too, it seems. We mind this less than most of the local merchants, I’m sure. We’ve walked in to every restaurant with no wait. We haven’t had to dodge people, even on the tourist trap River Street. Part of that is the weather, the mid-week visit and probably the economy. Maybe everyone has been here and is off exploring a new place.
Here is the monument to the Chasseurs Volontaires, the Haitians who fought in Savannah during the Revolutionary War:
It is apparently the first such monument in the U.S. It was installed in Franklin Square in 2009. And because this happened in the modern age, there was outrage and money and indignation:
Here’s the Mercer House. We’ve been in this square before. I don’t recall actually noticing the house, though:
From the site’s history page:
The Mercer House was designed by New York architect John S. Norris for General Hugh W. Mercer, great grandfather of Johnny Mercer. Construction of the house began in 1860, was interrupted by the Civil War and was later completed, circa 1868, by the new owner, John Wilder.
In 1969, Jim Williams, one of Savannah’s earliest and most dedicated private restorationists, bought the then vacant house and began a two-year restoration.
You have your origin story and your Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil story. There is a 100-year blank space in between. Makes you wonder what you’re missing out on, doesn’t it?
So we wandered around. We took shots in Forsyth Park as the sun went down. Here’s the big fountain:
We had dinner at 700 Drayton, which was where we had our dinner reception the night we got married. Delicious.
On those rare occasions when we order a dessert we split one between us. Our waiter brought us a second dessert because, he said, in his estimation the chef took too long to prepare our cake.
We walked next door to the Mansion, where we got married.
As we noted it was much cooler today than it was on that steamy, sunny June day in 2009:
About 80 degrees cooler once you consider the heat index.
By the time we walked back to our hotel, though, I’d have taken anything in between.
