Our afternoon activity is a tour of Bonaventure Cemetery, a beautiful old municipal cemetery made famous by the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Our guide Paschal was a wonderful story teller. Despite the heat, he regaled us with the history of the cemetery and how it ties with the history of Savannah. He pointed out symbols carved into stone monuments, interesting family plots, historical figures of importance to Savannah and less well known figures.
One thing we learned is that the statue of the bird girl that appeared on the cover of the book has been moved to the Telfair Museum.
After the tour, we went back to the hotel to rest up a bit. A couple of the group went out to dinner or for a walk. I decided I wanted to check out the riverfront. I started at the Waving girl statue and walked along the shop fronts, food stalls and restaurants. The water front is very active but the stores had a slightly touristy air about them.
I popped back up to street level near the Cotton Exchange building and walked down to Leopold's for ice cream. They had a lot of different and interesting flavours and the Turtle Pecan Pie flavour I tried was delicious!
I came back for an early night and a shower, ready for our next full day.
The main activity for day 2 in Savannah is a food walking tour. Travis took us to the Cotton Exchange to explain a bit of Savannah history before heading to the Taste Experience location to start the tour.
Our guide is Bailey. She was terrific! We had a total of 6 food stops starting with a pork belly stuffed donut at the shop
Along the way, in addition to sausage rolls, she crab soup (delish!), Parmesan crusted haddock with a beer taste, chicken empanada, and honey tastings with an apple honey cheddar bite and cookie, we walked along part of the river front starting with a great view of Talmadge Bridge with two large ships passing under.
Bailey took us for a walk through the JW Marriott hotel, which is in a refurbished power plant. The design is unique but it's the decor which stuns. The entire lobby area is filled with fossils, huge geodes, crystals of various sizes and a giant metallic looking dinosaur sculpture!
After popping back up to street level and a couple more stops we ended the tour at the Savannah Bee Company for the final taste of different honeys and a couple of treats.
Everyone broke up for the rest of the afternoon. I headed to the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters to book a tour. I had enough time to walk over to the Telfair Museum first to check out their collection and of course the Bird Girl. Most of the art was not particularly notable (some impressionist style paintings, portraits, sculpture) but they surrounded the Bird Girl with various paintings of Savannah, giving a nice context.
At the Owens-Thomas house, our guide emphasized the nature of the contributions of the enslaved population of the house to the running, maintenance and function of it for the family who lived there. Hearing of this in the context of home living puts it into a perspective that is very relatable to a city person like myself. I found it incredibly moving, and it was made more poignant by finding that a servant (probably an indentured woman of African descent) from the 1920s shared my name.
After a brief rest back at the hotel, the group of us headed to the Pirate's House for dinner. It's quite a fun but also historical house. There truly were pirates who occupied it and used various secret tunnels to get from there to the waterfront. The house inspired RL Stevenson's Treasure Island. You can still see parts of old tunnels and the Herb House is the oldest structure in Savannah. We quite enjoyed our meals as well!
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