Soul of the South~2

When we walked past Joe’s Crab Shack in Savannah, I remembered Rachel Ray featuring the resraurant on the Food Channel so we stopped for lunch.

Our fish and seafood skewers were delicious.

Allan checks our walking map so we can go back and find that Cathedral.

We enjoyed the scenery on the way and also another beautiful day.

More step homes.

There it is.  Our tour guide had said that approximately 25% of Savannah is Catholic.  Much of the Deep South is Baptist.

You can dip holy water from all sides of this font.

One picture is worth over a hundred words.

I always say that you learn a lot about the people, and the culture of a people, by the way they worship and what they hold dear in their churches.

These paintings — maybe they are frescoes — were to the right of the main center altar.

These are to the left of the main altar.

The pipe organ is in the back of the church, up in the choir loft.

The fourteen Stations of the Cross were large, elaborate, and three dimensional.

We arrived back in the sunshine on the River Front to catch a large seagoing vessel coming in from the Atlantic.  Savannah is 15 miles inland from the ocean.  This ship is from Bangkok.

A huge container ship was next in the afternoon parade.

This ship came from Panama.  Most of those containers are the size of railroad cars.

It was a wonderful way to spend our last afternoon in Savannah.

This container ship comes from Monrovia, wherever that is.

Allan and I were sipping on a beverage from Wet Willie’s.

She gave us samples until we found the right one. 

We never saw the track being used.  Only a few cars went down this street, very slowly.

Goodbye, River Front.  It was good knowing you.

We learned those stones are very, very old— that back in the earliest days of this city, which was founded shortly after the colonists made landfall here in 1733, ships dumped their heavy ballast on the shores before heading back across the ocean.  Colonists, and others through the ages, used the stones to “pave” their streets.

One last look back.

I didn’t know that Savannah is the name of the first steamship to cross the ocean, and it did the crossing in less than 30 days!  The year was 1819.

And then it was back up the steps to find our restaurant for dinner. 

We won’t see blooming plants back in Victoria for another couple months.

We knew we were going to eat here.  Do you see the name of it?  The Lady and Sons.

Paula Deen was waiting for us but her sons weren’t around.

We didn’t order her buttery rich food or her southern buffet.  We had Caesar Salads with chicken.

Kids were playing in a nearby fountain on this warm evening.

In Ellis Square, one of Savannah’s 24 squares, we found a bronze tribute to Johnny Mercer, the fellow who wrote Moon River, My Huckleberry Friend, You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, and many more familiar songs.  He was born in Savannah in 1909 and is also buried there.

Another famous Savannah artist is Thomas Kinkade.  I like his colorful whimsical country scenes.

We also came across this monument to mark the 1779 Battle of Savannah during the American Revolutionary War. 

It honors those free men of African descent who came from Haiti to help capture Savannah from the British during the War.