Savannah

I kissed goodbye to Florida today and crossed the state line into Georgia on my way to Savannah. Everywhere I had been so far told me that Savannah would be spectacular so my expectations were high. I had a crappy night's sleep the previous evening. The mosquitoes had finally beaten me in Florida and I was covered in bites and itchy as hell. I'd had an atrocious night's sleep and really wasn't in the mood for a five hour drive. When I got to the outskirts of Savannah I thought it looked a bit glib but even through my sleep deprived haze it's charm soon shone through.

I grabbed the deal of the century in a hotel right in the heart of the historic district, I'm opposite the river front and within walking distance of downtown (Broughton Street) and the city market precinct. The city is just alive with history from its foundation as a British colony, to its role in the American Civil War to it being the location for some of Forrest Gump film (The bus stop he waited at was located in one of the many squares that abound in the historic district). They even have the park bench used in the visitor centre for those inclined to be interested in such things. 

In other big news its seems I've made it here in time for a woman's state decreed execution. Kelly Gissendaner will be put to death using lethal injection tonight at 7.00pm. Apparently she is the first woman since 1945 to have the sentence carried out and she literally just had her last plea for clemency denied a matter of hours ago. Since allowing the death penalty to return in 1983 fifty seven people have been put to death in Georgia. I mentioned this to the bar lady last night and although a local she didn't even know they had the death penalty in Georgia. Its clearly not an issue that cuts through here.

The other interesting law and order story is there are signs all over the place saying how many people have died on the states road this year (973). Well as you know my opinion of U.S. driving is not great so I thought I'd compare it to Australia. The population of Georgia is about 10,000,000 and population of Australia is about 24,000,000 so you would think using the ratio as an indicator that our road death rate should be around 2,400. Well the stats are in, as of the end of August we are at 974 deaths. I think the data speaks for itself.

So anyway Savannah has many fascinating things about it. The squares that I mentioned are laid out in a very efficient fashion and break up the city nicely. Most of the side streets have beautiful residential homes so the city has a lived in feel. The Savannah College of Arts and Design (SCAD) had 11,000 students here and part of their mission is to preserve the historic nature of the town so many of it's campus building have re purposed historic buildings and brought them into the 21st century. Having 11,000 students wandering the streets also gives it a good vibe. They bring  an air of freshness and optimism to the area and make it an extremely pleasant place to stroll around. The fact that the city has 23 squares (which are all essentially park lands) makes it easy to navigate and to take a short break from the heat and humidity, of which you could argue they have cornered the market.

The bell pictured above is called "Big Duke" and before the days of radio and telephony the way fire fighters were signalled was the by the coded ringing of this bell. It would tell them which of the many squares you needed to head towards to help out with the fire. There are canons here captured in the war of Independence and gifted to the town by George Washington.

We are in the south so religion plays a huge part in everybodies lives. You have already seen the photo of the St John the Baptist Catholic Cathedral but of equal note is the fact that John Wesley, the guy who founded the Methodist Church, was a Church of England Minister here before branching out on his own. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the first run through of his "I Had A Dream" speech here at a local Baptist church before making the famous one we all know from Washington D.C. 

When Georgia was founded as British colony it had several bizarre rules. Firstly there were to be no Jews or papists (Catholics). The fear was that as the Spanish colony to the South and the French colony to the north were all Catholic any papists in Savannah may side with them if it came to a war. 

Unusually there were to be no slaves and also no hard liquor, wine and beer were fine but certainly no rum. There is a famous group of buildings here called the Pirate's House. Here they had a tunnel down to the river that served two purposes. One was you could smuggle rum in without taking it through the streets and it literally arrived straight to the bar. You could then shanghai the drunk with rum consumers for your ships crew on the return trip. Jews were quickly allowed into the colony when their original doctor died and a Jewish ship that tried to dock was only allowed to do so after the ship's Jewish doctor came ashore and helped with a significant outbreak of yellow fever. 

Now as you can see nearly all of these rules were ignored or taken out of play. Slavery was allowed from 1750, I've already told you how the rum got it in and the Jewish questions was just ignored completely when the colony received such excellent help when it had its medical epidemic. It was those damn papist that had to wait. I'm not sure when they were allowed in to Savannah but that beautiful Cathedral was only built around 1900 and replaced one that hard burnt down in the 1870's.

All in all Savannah is a gorgeous little city. Big enough to have everything you need but small enough to have real warmth and charm.