Bachelorette Party in Savannah!

As always Savannah was a blast. You would think that after as many trips as I have taken there, I would tire of the place but I can never see that happening. I consider myself a “Savannah Expert” but every time I go there, I learn things that I didn’t know before and I can still find new things to do there.

This trip was special since it was my friend, Red’s bachelorette party. Here we are all ready to go! (Left to right: Ash, La-la, me, and Red.) We had one more friend, Suz, meet up with us in Savannah.

We stayed at the River Street Inn, which was awesome! The building in which the hotel is located was once used as a huge cotton warehouse and the original brick walls dating back to 1817 are still visible throughout the hotel. We had a view of the Savannah River with all the huge ships passing through as well as great people-watching opportunities over River Street. I was in love with the huge windows and spent most of our in-hotel time sitting in one staring outside. (...Until I noticed this creepy guy staring at me from below. I waved at him and he waved back and kept staring so I gave him a thumbs-up. And when he just stood there smiling and staring, I decided to hop out of the window for a while.)
Here's our room with the awesome windows. You can see the river in the background.

The hotel location was incredible because not only were we right on River Street (and next to Wet Willie's) and across Bay Street from the beginning of the historical squares, but also next to two of my favorite buildings on River Street, The Old Cotton Exchange and Savannah City Hall.
Here's a blurry (no tripod used) picture of the City Hall just past sunset. The gold dome reminds me of the State Capital's dome in Atlanta.

And did I happen to mention just how pretty River Street is at night? We had awesome views of it all from our room.


This is the Talmadge Bridge which spans the river. Only two miles across the bridge is South Carolina State Line.

So enough about our hotel! I just made sure to enjoy it because at the price it cost to stay there, it was a once in a lifetime thing!



We ate at many cool restaurants during our stay. Food is one of the main reasons I go to Savannah in the first place! And I made sure to get my seafood "fix" while I was there. Mmmmm.
This is the Pirate's House Restaurant. The house (then called the Herb House) that is now a part of the restaurant is the oldest house in Georgia, built in 1734.
In 1753, it opened as an Inn for seafarers and soon became a meeting place for pirates. Blackbeard was known to frequent here. But it's Captain Flint, of Treasure Island fame, that is said to have died in an upstairs room and still roam the place. Many of the restaurant employees claim to have a run-in with his ghost.
The captain isn't the only ghost around here, though. Savannah is known to have an underground system of tunnels throughout the city. This tunnel entrance inside the Pirate's House was discovered in the 1960s. It's believed to lead to the river and believed to have been used by pirates for smuggling. There are rumors that some people were kidnapped and taken aboard the pirate ships. Disembodied screams and voices are often heard from the tunnel. By the way, isn't the pirate skeleton at the bottom a nice touch?!
But back to the food...Did your mom ever tell you not to play with your food? Well, if she did and you listened, you could have been missing out on some real fun...especially if you have fish fillet sandwhich in which the fillet is 3 times the size of the bun!




Oh and the fun you missed out on when your crawfish decided to stike back!

And to think this was before alcohol was involved!




Speaking of which... I did enjoy several Amaretto Sours during our Pub Crawl, but didn't become incoherrent the entire evening! What has become of the girl I used to know?

I got old, that's what!

That's not to say that we still don't know how to party, though!

Here we are sitting on River Street just before making our rounds to Wet Willie's. Suz is with us on the right end in this picture.






Suz stayed in the awesome, super-expensive, super-haunted Marshall House a couple of blocks away. As soon as I discovered, she was staying there, I immediately invited myself over! The Marshall House is one of the oldest running hotels around town. But the Marshall House was also used as a makeshift Civil War Hospital for Union troops. During a renovation of the hotel in the 1990's hundreds of arms, legs, hands, and feet bones discarded from amputations during the Civil War were found buried beneath the floorboards. There are many reported Civil War hauntings as well as children haunting the hotel. (If you stay here and happen to get room 304, don't worry. If the spirit that haunts the room becomes too much for you, the Marshall House will pay for your room at another hotel.) The long halls in this place are like something straight from The Shining. Red and Ash were renacting a scene from movie beckoning Suz to "come and play with me". What can I say? My friends are creepy and that's partly why I like them!

Other highlights from our trip...The waiter we had at the Pirate's House was hot and Ash and I saw him later that night walking down the street while we were on our Pub Crawl. He came up to me and put his hand on my arm and asked if I was having a good time and said, "Remember me? I was your waiter today!" Well, hell yeah I remembered! And for the rest of the night I was happy because he remembered me and so that means he liked me. Yes, I know that he is most likely just one of those people who remembers faces, but this is my story, damn it! And I'll tell it my way! So yeah, he totally liked me.

Our tour guide for the Haunted Pub Crawl is a historian and the author of one of the books I have on Savannah. He was such a cool guy. I wish that I had made the connection then as to who he was. Maybe he could have helped me with collecting information for the book I have been writing (for like 3 years..haha) on Savannah! And I had just been talking that night with the girls about just packing up my life and leaving north Georgia for coastal Georgia. I told them that I thought I could find another teaching job there and could take a tour guide job in the summer (since everyone tells me I should be a Savannah tour guide) and this guy owns and operates his own tour company. That's something else he could've helped me out with! Oh yeah, he was cute, too.

I visited a cemetery that I had never been to before in Savannah, Laurel Grove. It was pretty, but still nothing in comparison to Bonaventure Cemetery. The azaleas were in bloom and everything was so springy and green there (as well as the rest of the city). I hear that several famous Savannahians are buried here, but I am not sure who they are. I did find the Girl Scouts founder, Juliette Gordon Low's grave though.

It was another great trip. And as always, I am looking forward to going back to Savannah.