Or Savannah, as it is more commonly known. In early August, my friend Kerri and I spent two nights in this lovely Georgia town. Kerri had been in Georgia visiting high school and college friends, so I flew to Atlanta where she picked me up, and we drove together to Savannah.

Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia, and was founded by British General James Oglethorpe in 1733. Oglethorpe is the one who came up with Savannah’s city plan, a system of squares, surrounded by homes, churches and businesses. Twenty-two of the original 24 squares still remain. Many buildings in Savannah are pre-Civil War, because General Sherman did not destroy Savannah on his “march to the sea” from Atlanta. In fact, in December of 1864 Sherman presented Savannah to President Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas gift!

On the surface at least, Savannah is more of a southern lady than New Orleans. Even the name sounds genteel. I didn’t stay long enough to really get a feel for the town, however, as this trip was much shorter than my NOLA trip—only one full day and two half-days. With no agenda except vacationing, my friend and I chose the “fly by the seat of our pants” travel plan. My inner control freak gnashed her teeth, but managed to keep quiet most of the time. Here are some of the highlights of the trip:

Day 1

We arrived in Savannah to find the temperatures would likely be more than 100 degrees all three of the days we are in town, with heat indexes of 110-112. Goody. (Kerri lives in Seattle, WA, where the temperatures were averaging the upper 70s this week. Tell me again why we weren’t meeting each other in Seattle?)

Our first stop was the Savannah Visitor’s Center, where we picked up brochures for hotels and various tours and attractions. We wanted to go on a ghost tour, and see a house museum as well as walk the streets admiring the architecture and looking for good photo ops. Several trolley tour companies begin their Savannah tours from the Visitor’s Center and we decided to return the next day for an organized tour before we hit the cobblestones on foot.

After checking out several hotels, we opted for the Inn at Ellis Square. After a brief rest, we wandered down to River Street where it promptly began to rain. The late-afternoon thunderstorm is a staple in Florida, and evidently in Savannah, too, as it rained every afternoon, adding a certain extra soupiness to the already steamy air.

City Market

We walked to The Olde Pink House for dinner. Built in 1771 for the Habersham family, it originally got its distinctive pink color when the native red brick bled through the plastered walls. Besides being a private residence, The Olde Pink House has been a bank, attorney’s office, tea room and bookstore. The food was some of the best I’ve ever eaten, and the service was just as good. If you’re ever in Savannah, I highly recommend this restaurant.


Some of the delicious food:

No one ever told us not to play with our food...

 Stay tuned for more Savannah adventures!

So how are you? I’ve missed my blog friends these past two weeks, so I thought I’d check in and see how you’re all doing. Me, well, I’m fine but it’s been interesting…

We took our yearly trip to the lake house with one significant change: we brought with us five of our son’s teenage friends…I know, I know, what were we thinking? We had two other adults to supervise along with my husband and myself, so we were only slightly outnumbered.

This year instead of the Clampett Mobile, we had “The Cadillac” and “The Ferrari.”  The kids spent most of the week tooling around on the two personal watercraft, pulling each other on an inner tube or a wake board. When they weren’t playing XBox or watching Comedy Central. Or eating. Other than a yellow jacket attack the first day, all went well—no serious injuries (thank goodness) and everyone is still friends. Even my husband and I.

I’ve been doing some reading (see reading challenge page for updates) and writing (a series of articles for a website that’s about to launch) and I’ve also unfortunately been spending some time at the vet’s office. Scout has been under the weather, and we haven’t quite figured out the whole story. She’s been looking and acting pretty pitiful but she’s on some medication now that I hope will do the trick. There is nothing like the face of a dog who doesn’t feel well. She’s always been pretty healthy so we’re all a bit stressed out right now.

I don't feel so good...

But the sun is shining and the AC is working and life is generally good, despite the occasional hiccup.

How is your summer going?

Sometime in our lives my husband and I must have angered Poseidon, mythological god of the sea. We’ve been on three cruises together, and all three have featured the unexpected, if not the downright awful.

It all started on our honeymoon. My father had given us a four-night cruise as a wedding present. After embarking from San Pedro (CA) the day after our wedding, we were to visit San Diego, Catalina Island and Ensenada, Mexico. We’d endured a wild rainstorm on our wedding day, but the next morning dawned sunny and bright. The sea was a little choppy, but nothing Dramamine couldn’t handle.

Our first shore excursion, to the San Diego Zoo, provided us with a clue that the storm had left lasting effects. Many of the animal habitats lay strewn with tree limbs and other by-products of the wind and rain. We saw quite a few bewildered-looking animals exploring their “redecorated” homes.

The zoo was a bit messy, but otherwise fine, and our stop at Catalina was uneventful. But when we reached Ensenada, we were told the port was torn up and we weren’t able to dock. Our planned horseback-riding-on-the-beach excursion was exchanged for a day at anchor in the harbor where my new husband tried to teach me to play chess.

Two years later, we braved a second cruise, a more ambitious one: from Venice to ports in Turkey and Greece. Our troubles began before we even boarded the ship. We flew from our home in California to New York City, where we planned a couple of days’ sight-seeing before flying to Milan. A medical emergency on board forced us to make an emergency landing in Denver, where the size of the plane and the shortness of the runway destroyed our landing gear. The airline had to fly parts and mechanics to Denver to fix the plane, and an eight-hour unplanned layover—spent entirely in the airport, waiting for news about when we would fly out—ensued. 

Next, when we disembarked in Milan, I left our contact lens solution on the airplane. After we moved on to Venice before our cruise, it rained constantly as we tried to explore the beautiful old city. Pictures from this trip feature us wearing chic green plastic bag slickers—and glasses!

When we finally boarded the ship, our cabin was situated next door to crews' quarters where they argued constantly and loudly. It featured a wall-mounted toilet-flushing button so stiff I had to use my foot in order to press it hard enough to do the job. Another storm delayed the cruise so that our shore excursions took place at night. We “saw” Greece from a bus in the dark. On the trip home, which took more than 24 hours, I came down with a cold. While waiting for our connecting flight at JFK, we were reduced to eating out of vending machines and drinking our souvenir Greek Metaxa out of a paper bag.

One thing we did see: Corinth Canal

Our last attempt at cruising occurred about seven years ago. We sold our business and to celebrate, decided to take a cruise to Alaska, a dream of my husband’s. This time, our son, my mom and step dad and my husband’s mom joined us.

While we were on the land portion of our tour, news reports of a “sick ship”—our ship!—reached us. The illness, Norovirus, was described as “a mild gastrointestinal illness,” but the cruise before ours had to head back early because so many passengers became ill, and so the ship could be disinfected before our cruise began.

We were a little nervous about boarding, but all seemed fine. Aside from industrial-sized containers of hand sanitizer on every deck and not being able to serve ourselves from the buffet, there seemed to be no sign of the previous passengers’ illness. The ship was lovely, our stateroom comfortable (with an easily-flushed toilet) and to our son’s joy and our eventual thankfulness, two TVs. We enjoyed the gorgeous scenery and cushy shipboard amenities. Our son gloried in the freedom of the kids’ programs, and roaming the ship with new friends and a walkie-talkie to keep in touch with us.

It was just after a stop at Glacier Bay that I started to feel a little queasy. I popped some additional seasickness medicine, but it didn’t help. I quickly went from sipping champagne and eating chocolate-dipped strawberries to being confined to my bathroom. My son didn’t even make it back to the cabin—he threw up in the elevator. My poor husband had to take care of him while I collapsed in bed. “Mild” illness? I've never been so sick in my life.

A “cabin call” from the medical staff distributed shots and other medications to battle the virus. Just as I started to feel a little better, my husband began to fall ill.

Aside from feeling so bad, between the actual illness and quarantine days, we missed two out of three ports of call, including our helicopter/glacier/sled dog shore excursion. (We couldn’t have been sick or quarantined during one of our days at sea, oh no.) When we finally staggered off the boat, we vowed never again. The only bright spot in this horrific trip was that our parents, who were all in their late 60s, did not get the virus, and by all accounts, had a marvelous time.

So when it’s time to plan our next vacation and one of us says, “Hey, let’s go on a cruise,” we laugh ourselves silly and make different plans. Land plans.

This is the third year we’ve rented the house with them, and we still remain friends despite hard fought battles of dominoes, Yahtzee, rummy and other card games, and the efforts of my son, C and G the younger to drive each other insane. The wives (P and myself) spend as much time possible reading on the screened porch, and the husbands devote much of their time to keeping the boys from killing themselves and each other. (Who has the more relaxing vacation, do you think?)


We haul up inflatables and fishing gear for the kids to play with in addition to the slide on the lake house dock. I don’t know what he was thinking, but this year, my husband purchased a used jet ski for the boys’ (well-supervised) use. As is the manner of jet skis, this one promptly proved to be a lemon. Four days and $200 later, we towed it to Georgia, where it continued its stubborn habit of breaking down, until the dads rigged it for action with duct tape. It became affectionately known as the Clampett Mobile.



I hope they’ll remember the hours spent with family and friends—sharing meals, playing games, watching movies, swimming, fishing and jet skiing. I hope they remember how hard the dads worked to keep the jet ski running and filled with gas, and the round of golf the teenagers and their dads shared (my son got his first birdie!). I suspect the mishaps will be remembered as well or better than the uneventful hours spent flinging themselves off the dock into the water. For example, one night while we were playing games (adults: cards; teens: Xbox), G looked out the window and noted that the inflatable Cube was gone from the dock. My son and C took that as a combat challenge, had their bathing suits on and tore down to the water before you could say, “Hey, it’s raining,” which it was. They retrieved the errant Cube and returned wet but covered in glory.