Sweet November: Our trip, Part 1: Savannah, GA

We're home! We flew in late on Friday night, thankfully right before the blizzard hit. Yesterday we were pretty much snowed in to our apartment, it was miserable out there. I had to work, but since thats a short walk away it wasn't bad, my pants were soaked up to my knees from the snow though! It was definitely a rude awakening after being in ~~warm~~ decent weather all week in the south. After work I had to run to the grocery store since we were totally out of milk for Jace since we'd just gotten home. It's times like this that I'm so thankful for 4 wheel drive, my car always has great traction. I hope everyone else stayed safe, too.

The trip was a whirlwind, I can't even keep days straight on what we did... it all went by so fast. We flew to Savannah, Georgia early on Sunday morning. Since we left early Jace was really sleepy on the plane and we had no problems with the flight there. (Except for running threw the Detroit airport for our connection to Savannah... we had 15 minutes to get from one side to the other, but we made it!) I was so relieved that he was well behaved on the flight. He hates to sit still for even a minute, and rarely lets us hold him unless he's tired... so it worked out perfectly. I was also nervous to fly myself since I haven't flown in about 18 months, and that was before I developed Meneire's disease during my third trimester. I had been warned that flying can trigger an episode of severe vertigo, or "drop spells" as I had. I was extremely relieved to feel none of those effects.

(More on Meneire's: I haven't had any drop spells since having Jace a year ago, but the nuerologist I saw when I was pregnant said the Meneire's had nothing to do with pregnancy and would be a life long condition. I was sent to a physical therapist who disagreed and said anything developed during pregnancy is likely related to that huge change your body is going through, and thought it was unlikely someone as young as I am would have Meneire's disease. Luckily so far it seems that the physical therapist was right.)

Once we landed at the small airport in Savannah, we got our rental SUV and headed to the hotel. As we were driving into the city I knew right away we wouldn't be living there. Tate felt it too. It's not that Savannah isn't a great city, it's just not for us at all. I feel like you can usually tell if somewhere could be "home" as soon as you get there. To me, it was just out of my comfort zone. The actual historic part of Savannah, which is very cute, is only about 2 miles x 2 miles. The rest of the surrounding area was either really dangerous looking, dirty, or small townish. The people were very nice, they were all very soft spoken and hard to understand though! I suppose that would just take some getting used to. Sometimes we would just smile and nod because you can only say "What?" so many times without sounding stupid.

Since we knew that we wouldn't want to live in Savannah, we didn't even bother house hunting. We drove around the surrounding areas a little, which only made us more certain we wouldn't be living there. Instead we treated Savannah as a vacation and spent our time enjoying the city. The first day we headed to a little sports bar and grill called Loco's in downtown to watch the vikings game. Jace loves going out to eat (he is our kid!) so he enjoyed himself there and we received a lot of comments about how easy going he is. After the game ended we walked around the main street for a bit. As we were walking there was a huge blood stain on the side walk, it looked like it was left over from the night before. Yep, not living in Savannah.

We got in the car and drove about 15 minutes away to Tybee Beach, a small resort town on the coast. In December the whole city is a ghost town. We wanted to see the ocean though, so we walked down to the beach. It was Jace's first time seeing the ocean! It was really pretty on the beach, even in December. The sun was shining, there was a flock of birds splashing in the water, and there were gorgeous vacation homes lining the beach. Jace didn't seem all that impressed though. ;)

Jace and I were both exhausted so we headed back to the hotel and crashed at 7 pm. Tate wasn't tired so he headed out to a couple of bars near our hotel to get a feel for the area. He found out some interesting sights to check out from some of the locals, but when he was about to walk back to our hotel one of them told him after 10 pm it's not safe to walk around in the city unless you have a gun, so he took a cab three blocks back to the hotel. (As if we weren't already convinced this wasn't going to be our home!)

The next morning we walked around downtown looking for a cute place to eat breakfast. We walked through alot of the historical parks and took lots of pictures. It was so nice to be able to enjoy walking around in decent weather. The locals kept complaining that it was unseasonably cold there, but at 55 degrees and sunny skies we were happy! We ended up at a little place called Goose Feather's cafe. We all shared a delicious breakfast. After breakfast we drove to Wilmington Island, the ritzy area surrounding Savannah. Paula Dean has lived there for more than 20 years. She's a big deal in Savannah I guess. Ben Affleck had a house there as well, but I'm not sure if he still does. The houses were huge, but they overlooked these swampy wetlands. I guess the marshes are a big deal in the area. But, since we come from the land of 10,000 lakes we didn't quite get it. We were later told there are lots of aligators living in the marshes, and they surface when it gets really hot.

Later on that day we checked out River Street in downtown. There were lots of little shops and restaurants lining the river for several blocks. By this time in the day, the sun was setting and it was very pretty. I wanted to check out a restaurant with real southern cooking so Tate reluctantly agreed and we headed to Paula Dean's restaurant The Lady and her Sons. The restaurant is famous for it's unique buffet of southern foods, including fried chicken, collard greens, deep fried twinkies, and a bunch of other stuff I didn't even recognize. When we sat down we were immediately greated with hoe cakes and cheesey garlic biscuits. Jace was in heaven, he loves hoe cakes I guess! We ordered fried green tomatoes for an appetizer and had sweet tea. I am now obsessed with sweet tea! Tate ordered some seriously fried shrimp for dinner and I choose the $19 chicken pot pie. I think it was priced $1 per stick of butter in the pot pie. Seriously. I could only eat about 10 bites before I was so stuffed I thought I couldn't move, and for me that's saying alot.

The next morning Tate had to work so Jace and I hung out at the hotel for a few hours. As soon as he got back we checked out and hit the road to Charleston, which is about a two hour drive from Savannah. I was so excited to get out of Savannah and on to the city I thought we could really live in. Tate was a little skeptical at this point that Charleston would be exactly like Savannah and we'd end up having to completely re-think our living situation and look in Florida or North Carolina instead. I was more optimistic since I'd been the one doing the research on the cities and always felt that Savannah wasn't a good fit. We crossed our fingers and kept driving... stay tuned for our Charleston adventure!