Savannah

My favorite...... Savannah, Georgia........... we went there for the first time in 2006.... and we drove there after leaving Florida........ so pretty still...... tranquil in the squares, busier in the city center, but there's just something in the air in that city that makes you pay attention.

The big old trees, just dripping with Spanish moss......... and the big old homes around the squares...... it was hot there also, but no one seemed to care, not even us.  We had dinner the first night at Paula Deen's "The Lady & Sons," and then made a reservation for lunch there the next day.  Everyone is just so happy in that restaurant.... everyone who works there is always smiling.... the customers are happy to wait on line to get a table....... happy and smiling one day, and more happy and bigger smiles the next day.  Paula's magic is just there, all over, around every table, on every floor of that restaurant.

The first time we went to "The Lady & Sons," there was a small closet-like enclosure which held Paula's cookbooks and small gift items.  Now she has a huge store-sized gift shop next to the restaurant...... every cookbook that she's ever put out, plus her sons' cookbooks......... and every kind of kitchen item you can think of is in there with her restaurant's name on it.  Upstairs was a room filled with Christmas items, and still more kitchen utensils.  She had really pretty iced-tea glasses, but I didn't want to buy those and take a chance of having them broken in the luggage before we got home.

We drove to Bonaventure Cemetery..... walked around there for nearly an hour....... more huge old trees decorated to the ends of the branches with Spanish moss that fluttered in the hot breeze.  I can see the appeal of that cemetery..... if you take away all the old tombstones, you'd have a beautiful park.  As it was, the tombstones just add an authentic and very humbling sense of peace to the beautifully-cared-for grounds.

Just like our first visit to Savannah, I carried around my copy of "Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil" (which is why we visited Savannah in the first place---- you read that book and the story and the characters just draw you into the magic of that city).  I started reading the book on the plane ride to Florida.... and didn't stop even after we left Savannah.

The dust-jacket cover on the "Midnight" book is so beautiful.... the famous Bird Girl statue that once stood at a gravesite in Bonaventure Cemetery--- they had to remove it from the cemetery and put it in the city's museum because so many tourists were trying to chip small pieces of the statue to keep as souvenirs.  One of these days, I'm going to find my own Bird Girl statue for our own garden.  Till then, I'll read the book which was written about the sculptor of that statue, and the story behind it.

If I had to pick another city to live in, it would just have to be Savannah............... the squares, the old trees, the Spanish moss dancing above your head, the happiness and peace, and the history there...... and what better way to spend eternity--- sleeping forever in Bonaventure Cemetery.