My plane landed in Savannah at around 9am, and we had a few hours to kill in the gorgeous weather (60 degrees on the last day of December in the MORNING!) before we could check into our hotel. So we went on a bit of our own little walking tour.
The thing we both liked immediately about Savannah was the architecture. We were staying in the historic district, and luckily, unlike many other cities, the original architecture has been preserved for quite a while so it felt authentically historical.I also was partial to the abundance of Spanish moss hanging from almost every tree.
We stumbled upon the Forsyth Park fountain without quite realizing where exactly we were, before finding a map and making our way to River Street.
River Street is a big tourist draw for Savannah. Our hotel concierge told us that's where she suggested finding something to eat, which we later found wasn't quite fair to the rest of the city. (Vinnie's Pizza on the Go-Go is an old-fashioned pizza parlor where you can watch the guys make the pizza from start to finish while you wait for your to-go order. Pizza fanatics such as Chris and I highly recommend it next time you're in the City Market of Savannah.)
The best part of River Street, in my opinion, is the big ex-factory building near the World War II memorial. From the awnings over the shops, the never-updated or remodeled old brick siding, to the cobblestone street below, standing in front of it looking up at the windows feels like you've actually stepped into another decade, or perhaps even century.
Eventually it was time to check into our hotel, where we promptly took an EPIC nap before waking up to get ready for our swanky New Year's Eve dinner. We had reservations at Paula Deen's The Lady and Sons restaurant for 9, and it was only 5 and we were already starving. , and I was super-excited for it. Chris didn't quite know who Paula Deen was, but when I told him what I knew of the menu, he grew excited as well.
I am no cook, and Chris doesn't cook often, but probably the great basis for our relationship is our intense love of being fatties. Nothing gets us more excited than the prospect of a glorious meal, whether it's a feast laid out before us at a grand restaurant or holiday event, or spreading out our greasy fast food in front of a hockey game and chowing down until we are comatose.
Needless to say, we were pretty stoked.
But remember when I said we were fatties? Yeah. We had gotten too hungry to wait until 9pm for dinner so we had ordered wings in the room. While the calamari was excellent, the actual entree part of the evening we sort of ruined for ourselves. I was still a little full from my wings, and I forgot the golden rule of crabcakes: NEVER order them outside of Maryland. Once you've grown up with the spoils of Maryland crabcakes, everything else will just be a waste of what could have been another, more specialized entree. Chris was sick and could not be the impressively fat fatty he normally is. We had to leave behind most of our ample leftovers because we weren't going back to the room before midnight.
From dinner we went to City Market, where a few bars were but also where there is a couple of blocks for just pedestrians, shoppers, and partiers. We settled into The BAR Bar (...) where we'd gotten a pre-dinner drink, and actually found a couple of seats at the bar. Downtown Savannah is not nearly as crazy as even DC for holiday celebrations.
Not only was the street blocked off and set up with outdoor bars for partiers, the weather was still mild and the local radio station had set up a stage for a band that played Skynyrd and the like actually really well. Chris and I were dressed up, satiated, and excited to ring in our first New Year's together.
We tried to run down to River Street for midnight, as an Atlanta native and New-Year's-in-Savannah patron we met at our pre-dinner drink had tipped us off too, but it was too foggy to see any of the fireworks.
The next day we spent mostly in our hotel room watching the Rose Bowl and the Winter Classic. And laughing our asses off at America's Funniest Videos like the easy-to-pleasers we can be. (CAT VIDEOS FTW.) We ventured down to City Market around lunch to have dinner at a restaurant called TAPAS, which was confusing because it wasn't really a Tapas restaurant. This was definitely the best meal of the trip, as on January 1st, 2011, we sat outside on the patio in t-shirts devouring delicious crab ravioli in cream sauce and a bacon cheeseburger cooked to perfection. We surrounded by people who had brought their very well-behaved dogs to lunch and got to watch passersby as well.
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