Today was a beautiful day in Savannah. The layout of the historic district is pretty simple--it is like a giant rectangle. All the streets are perpendicular to each other. The district is made up of 22 squares, essentially small parks named for a person or area. Robyn wanted to tour the Owens-Thomas house and it was only a few blocks from the hotel. Savannah advertises itself as the most haunted city in America, and almost every old house or building has a ghost associated with it. I am skeptical of most ghost sightings because I think people see and hear things when the suggestion of a ghost is made; besides, I think New Orleans might challenge that claim made by Savannah. As we began walking down the street into the historic district the one thing that is noticed is the number of trees that shade everything and make it much more pleasant. Many of the trees are draped in Spanish Moss, and it just looks so southern.




Melanie had seen a church steeple from our hotel and wanted to walk to it. We found the Owens-Thomas house and it was apparent that Melanie and Debby did not want to tour the house. I told Robyn we would come back later to tour the house. We found the church Melanie had seen and it was the Cathedral of St John the Baptist. Melanie, Debby, and Robyn went in but as I have said before, if you have seen one cathedral you have seen them all, and unless something significant happened at the cathedral (or it is St Paul's, Notre Dame, or Westminster Abbey) they are not worth spending time touring. So I walked around the square looking at the various buildings and houses. One of them was a boutique hotel called the Hamilton-Turner Inn, which was very nice looking and I am sure was expensive.





After the women finished with their visit of the cathedral (which they said was gorgeous) we continued walking down the various streets and found a combination book store and tea shop E. Shaver Bookseller. It was really cool. I like small independent book stores and this one was great because they had two cats that had the run of the store. One was named Mr. Elliott named for T.S. Elliott, and we were told he only answers to Mr. Elliott not just Elliott.



After the bookstore we found Chippewa Square which is where the opening to "Forrest Gump" was filmed when he is on the bus stop bench and talking about chocolates (blah, blah). Each square only has benches in the middle of the square and not on the street and that includes Chippewa. We think they took a bench and placed it next to the street and then filmed; the bench from the movie is at the Telfair Museum. We also found the best-named square in Savannah, Johnson Square. Near this square was a stately Presbyterian church called Independent Presbyterian Church which the sign said was affiliated with Presbyterian Church of Scotland making this one of the oldest Presbyterian churches in the south.





After lunch and more shopping (oh boy my favorite thing to do), Robyn and I headed over to the Owens-Thomas house. It was an interesting house, as it is one of the older historic houses and when built probably the most elegant. The house is one of the few with the surviving slave/servant quarters. Slaves in Savannah were treated much better than slaves in the rest of the south. Free people of color could hold jobs and own property as long as they had a white sponsor. Slaves were also allowed to hold jobs and marry free people of color; they were still slaves and considered property but their lives were somewhat better. The Owens-Thomas house was finished in 1819. It was designed by English architect William Jay who put indoor plumbing into the house which was the first house in Savannah to have that luxury. To accomplish this there were three cisterns built into the house that contained up to 7750 gallons of rain water. The only other significant thing about the house was that the Marquis de Lafayette stayed in the house for two nights in 1825. He was the last surviving general from the American Revolution and was taking a tour of the US for the 50 year anniversary of the start of the Revolution. He gave two speeches from a side balcony to the people of Savannah, one in English and one in French. Other than that there was nothing historical about this house, plus they didn't allow pictures, so kind of pointless to go through it. As I have said--when you have seen one historic house you have seen them all.

That was pretty much it for today; tomorrow we leave to come home. Oh thank god.