Georgia on my mind

Living it up in luxury
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Howdy y’all from Savannah, Georgia! Savannah is amazing! It looks exactly like it does in the movies (we haven't spotted Forrest Gump yet!) with lovely old Southern homes surrounded by tree lined streets with Spanish moss spilling over the branches and squares and gardens scattered throughout the town. Emma has fallen in love with the place!

On the way to Savannah we also stopped in at 'the oldest city in the USA', St Augustine.  St Augustine is a quaint little town about halfway between Orlando and Savannah. It seemed pretty popular with the older crowd and Em and I were getting some strange looks from the locals who probably weren't used to seeing any tourists under the age of 60 wandering the streets!

The extravagant B&B
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Unfortunately (or fortunately) we didn't plan as well as we should have and arrived in Savannah without any bookings for accommodation, so ended up staying at a wonderful old B&B in the historic district of town. As the words 'wonderful' and 'historic' probably suggest, this B&B was way over our budget! But what the heck (Southern for 'what the hell'), we’re on holiday! We made sure we got the most out of it though and took full advantage of the free cheese and wine, dessert and hot breakfast in the morning - we couldn't afford lunch the next day so we had to!

Onboard the Queen of Savannah
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We decided to go the budget option for our second night in Savannah and checked into the Thunderbird Inn. We were a bit concerned about whether we could go back to these types of digs after living in luxury the night before but needn't have worried. The Thunderbird definitely lived up to its slogan of 'the best value hotel downtown'. It was a typical American 1960s motel that had been refurbished but they had left the rooms in a retro style complete with coloured headboards above the beds, white vinyl chairs and chrome fittings throughout!

The retro motel
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After checking out the historic district of Savannah it was time to hit the river on one of the classic Savannah riverboats. We bought our tickets and boarded the Queen of Savannah for our trip up the river. The Queen was a big old white river boat decked out with banners in the American colours draped over the sides, powered by a big red paddlewheel at the back… well that's what we thought anyway!! We got through the whole trip thinking that we were on an authentic paddleboat only to find out when we were pulling in to dock and tried to take a picture of the paddle that it wasn't moving at all!! Emma was crushed! Her life long dream of riding a paddleboat down the river had been a fraud!

Thunderbirds are go!
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After Emma had calmed down we headed out for our last dinner in Savannah. We ended up dining at a place called Wild Wings where they have about 30 different flavours of Buffalo wings. By the way, after always wondering how they get the buffaloes to grow wings (and such small ones at that) I was shocked to find out that they are not from buffaloes at all! Well that's not entirely true, they are from a buffalo, just not buffalo the animal, but Buffalo the city, who would have thought?!

This afternoon we are off to explore Tybee Island, which is about 20 minutes from Savannah, and then it's onto Charleston, which is supposed to be a lot like Savannah on a smaller scale so should be good!