Savannah & More Buttah! – April 15th

On Wednesday, the four of us headed to Savannah and probably testing poor Gwen’s car-riding tolerance to the limit!

Now I have been to Savannah 2 other times in my life and I will say it is a nice city. But over-all, I’m not sure I see the “draw.” The last time the four of us were in Savannah was several years ago when we ended up doing a last minute road trip from Folly Beach, SC. At the time we thought we “missed” something in general about Savannah, so we wanted to give it another shot. In a nut shell though, yes, I think it’s a nice city, but hands down I’d go to a larger city such as Charleston any day. But I will say, each time we were there, we were there for a short amount of time, so we very well could have missed many areas worth seeing.

This time, we at least embarked relatively early – after breakfast – and drove directly to Savannah’s River Street to park. The River Street area is the first street in from the Savannah River – it’s pretty touristy, but the building are old an beautiful and if you have a hankering for a beer, popcorn, a t-shirt or candy…this is the place for you! Actually, what we all thought was pretty interesting is that in Savannah, you can walk around with alcohol (it just needs to be in a plastic cup) and you are good to go. So when in Savannah…do as the Savannahites do!

We strolled down River Street with our cups in hand and pretty much determined that yet again, we’d zip through the city. But it was a nice day, so we figured just take it all in and enjoy.

After River Street we headed up (literally, it looks like River Street is at the bottom of a cliff) to walk around the city and check out the various squares that Savannah is known for. The city has a ton of Weeping Willows (at least I think that’s what I was looking at!) and everyone is dressed nice and it was just nice to take it all it.

Gwen and I made sure we directed Scott and Larry towards a favorite little shop of ours previously discovered during the last visit that has handmade concoctions of creams and oil perfumes, including my favorite Savannah Rain. The owner actually works in the store and she is so helpful.

This time however, Gwen and I hit the jackpot! The store at one point was selling Lancome and Perscriptive brand cosmetics. I guess the owner decided to discontinue selling these products, so they was a table full of stuff with everything costing $5.00. I almost fell over because one of the items I purchased, a face cream, would have been about $70 bucks in a department store! But of course, being me, I was waffling about buying, so I just bought the Savannah Rain body lotion.

We headed out for lunch and then I was saying to Gwen that I should have bought from the $5.00 table.

So back to the store we went! I grabbed what I could for my Mom and I and headed to the check out.

I actually believe we did this scenario of leaving and coming back in one more time because I am a goofball who can’t make a decision…but I was a happy camper after it was all said and done.

We then went to City Market, which is an area of several blocks of shops and restaurants that is cornered off for people to walk around – cute area!

The day in Savannah was nice, but we needed to head back to Beaufort for dinner so we weren’t driving the back roads in the dark, which gets a little tricky between Savannah and Beaufort.

On our way back, we thought we’d check out one towns near Beaufort for dinner. People had mentioned a place on the island of Port Royal that we thought was right the bridge from Beaufort, so we thought we’d check it out. Apparently, the place we thought we were supposed to go to wasn’t the one we saw over the bridge, which turned out to be this crappy restaurant with pseudo-seafood meals. We stayed for a drink and then bolted. I had snuck out just before we left and asked some people coming in where we could find a good seafood place. They recommended 11th Street Dockside Restaurant on Port Royal (apparently we weren’t even ON port Royal yet) – so we quickly left and headed for Port Royal.



It was too bad we saw Port Royal for the first time at night because nothing was really open…but what a cute town! But we DID find the restaurant, which was right on the water. You could see the restaurant’s fishing boats tied up and the sun was going down and it was just a beautiful evening – fortunately, we were able to get a seat after a short wait.

Over all, pretty good food, although, fried seemed to be a staple and I suppose you really can’t screw up friend food. I’ll also, point out that they served hushpuppies yet again accompanied by a large scoop of butter – sheesh…we couldn’t seem to get away from the butter!

Afterwards, we drove around Port Royal promising to come back during the day when we could check it out better.

As we were headed to dinner I had noticed one of my FAVORITE places in the world…Friendly’s Restaurant – know for it’s great ice cream, burgers, fries and New England Clam Chowder (at least that’s what I love about it!). So immediately after we left Port Royal I chirped up that a Friendly’s pit stop was in fact a must.

I’m not sure if my travel companions saw the draw of Friendly’s…but frankly I did not care…I was like a kid in a candy store, since Friendly’s is not in the Midwest.

We all had our scoops and went back to the house for another round of beer, wine and Dominoes!