Monday, April 20, 2015

Strollin' in Savannah

After a long winter in Baltimore, with trips to Montreal and upstate New York doing little to thaw the bones or warm the skin, the prospect of a change of scenery with a few days down south was eagerly anticipated. The meatball and I wanted to do something a little special on my penultimate visit to Columbia this year, and as that final trek will be to celebrate her graduation (I’m so proud of her!), this was our last chance to get out of town for a day trip.

There was much to do before that, however, including ignore her while becoming engrossed with Friday Night Lights when we arrived at her house late Thursday night after my flight into Charlotte. My main complaint, unsurprisingly, is that there isn’t enough football in the show, but considering I walked into a house full of girls in the middle of the third season of a show I’ve never watched, I think I managed to follow along with the plotline fairly well. I think Tyra giving up on her college dreams to follow the cowboy into the wilds of Texas was a huge mistake, but what do I know?

We woke up Friday and resumed our rivalry at the university’s gym, playing spirited games of Around the World and one-on-one before challenging each other to free throw and three-point shooting contests. Gina then abandoned me to work on a project with classmates at the business school – and by abandoned, I mean I encouraged her to leave so that I could ask the guys on the practice court next to me if they needed another person to play a pickup game, which we did for the next hour and a half before calling it quits.


After showering and changing into something a bit less disgusting and sweaty, I picked Gina up and we made our way to dinner at Cantina 76, an excellent Mexican-inspired restaurant and bar on Main Street in Columbia. The chicken pesto, chicken teriyaki, and BBQ shrimp tacos I had were washed down with a Corona, and Gina just had a veggie taco and the chips and queso she split with me since she and her partners took advantage of the value menu at Wendy’s earlier that afternoon. Choices, choices.

That night we went to a soirée hosted by Gina’s friend, and the birthday boy, Owen, a very cool guy to whom I wish I could’ve gotten to know more in my visits to Columbia over the past few months, but the timing just hasn’t worked out. People got dressed up, to some extent or another, and it was a fun time filled with delicious cookies made by Gina’s roommate Kristy for the occasion. Instead of continuing the night downtown, though, Gina and I headed home a bit early with our expedition the next day in mind.

My hot date for the night!

There were really three choices for our trip – Asheville, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia. I had some of the best few months of my life in the summer of 2012 as an intern at the Asheville Art Museum, spending many nights watching the sunset over McCormick Field and eating macaroni and cheese at the Southern on Lexington Avenue, but I also went back just last summer and Gina and I have our own plans for the mountains this summer. I’ve heard great things about Charleston, but as one of its most significant selling points is the beach and nothing but rain was expected that day, the desire to visit just wasn’t there. Selfishly, the minor league baseball team there didn’t have a home game that night, so that obviously ruled Charleston out for good.

In fact, the Charleston RiverDogs were playing a couple hours to the south in Savannah on Saturday evening, and going to Savannah also meant we could meet with a friend of mine from college who I hadn’t seen in a few years. Hannah just started working as the Catering Sales Manager at a fabulous boutique hotel in Savannah, the Mansion on Forsyth Park, and Gina and I made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Columbia in time to amble lazily around Forsyth Park itself, taking in beautiful, leafy squares and residential side streets before meeting Hannah and her boyfriend Morris for a short tour around the hotel, followed by lunch at a noodle restaurant on Broughton Street, the commercial and retail hub in Savannah today.

Walking into Forsyth Park
 
We then bid adieu to Hannah and Morris for the day and walked to River Street, a bustling riverfront environment of restaurants, bars, and little shops today but was originally constructed as the docking site for the port that made Savannah one of the most strategically important cities in colonial America. Even today, Savannah is still home to the fourth-largest port for shipping container traffic in North America. Savannah has a fascinating history; it was first established in 1733 as the capital of the British Province of Georgia and later became the first state capital of Georgia. It was the birthplace of the University of Georgia, today located in Athens. It was home to the first Girl Scout headquarters in the United States.


Savannah City Hall
 
Savannah was originally built around four open squares each with eight surrounding blocks that allowed it to expand over time, and today there are 22 squares within the city. Gina and I didn’t get to see all of them, but we did stumble on what I later discovered was the first and largest of them – Johnson Square, which was named for Robert Johnson, the British colonial Governor of South Carolina and friend of James Oglethorpe, the British general who founded the colony of Georgia in 1732. Johnson Square, located just a couple blocks from Broughton Street, has two fountains and, most interestingly to me as a history major, a monument that contains the remains of General Nathanael Greene, a Revolutionary War hero and Rhode Island native who died just outside Savannah. Greene began the war as a private in the militia and worked his way all the way up the ranks to lead the American forces in the Southern Campaign and became the second-most important military commander in the Continental Army, under only George Washington.

Nathaniel Greene's monument in Johnson Square

After waiting in line for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only twenty minutes in reality, we gorged ourselves on ice cream at Leopold’s, which has been around since 1919 and appears to be something of a local tradition in Savannah, at least judging by the wait to get in. I had one scoop of honey almond and cream and another scoop of chocolate chewies and cream, and Gina had chocolate raspberry swirl.


Yep

This April day was perfect for ice cream, and Savannah is an ideal town to wander around the cobblestone and brick streets, cone in hand, and lose yourself in the sleepy pace of life that characterizes so many Southern cities. With that said, no amount of green space or shade could mitigate the brutally hot and humid summer days there, and no amount of ice cream could pacify me into living amongst the slow pace of life exhibited by locals and tourists alike, and their lack of any sense of urgency whatsoever.

Gorgeous streets of Savannah

We finished the night at Historic Grayson Stadium, which has been around since 1926 and is home to the Savannah Sand Gnats, a farm team of the New York Mets since 2007. The Sand Gnats were hosting the aforementioned Charleston RiverDogs, and I brought my handy notebook and three different-colored pens to diligently keep score of the game. Around the third inning, I felt a pat on the back from a patron in the row behind us to ask what major league team I was scouting for, to which I disappointingly had to admit that I just really like baseball and was doing it for myself. My ego was then restored in the eighth inning, when the mom next to us, who put in a superhuman effort in keeping two very young boys in check by herself for over three hours, asked me if I worked for the Morning News, the city’s daily newspaper. Again I was forced to admit that no, I was doing it all on my own. The visitors triumphed on this evening, winning 6-4, and Gina found a new boyfriend from Texas.

Historic Grayson Stadium in all its glory

Sunday was quiet and rainy all day; we stayed home and made a nice dinner with bourbon-glazed salmon and asparagus. We braved a tornado watch on our drive back to the airport in Charlotte to drop me off, where the TSA agent called for me to step forward through the scanner before complimenting me on my Union Jack-patterned socks. After getting through security and stopping at a bench to put my belt back on and gather my things, I received another pat on the back from an older gentleman who asked if I play professional sports, because his kids are into soccer and he saw my socks and the Liverpool FC jacket (thanks Davey!) I was wearing. Gina says I’m annoyingly approachable, and I suppose I must acknowledge that it’s true.

I’m back in Baltimore now, and should have a relaxing next couple weekends before making my last visit to Columbia in early May. I’m very, very proud of Gina for how hard she’s worked for four years – interestingly enough, we both had lives before the nine months that she and I have been dating – and am excited to spend time with her family and celebrate a big occasion in her life. I’ll get to see two of her roommates graduate, too, so it should be a wonderful time overall. More then.