Escape: Eating & Shopping

(I’m sorry to say that I never remembered to take any pictures of the totally delicious food we ate on our trip.  At least not until it was half-eaten and dripped down the front of one of us, anyway.)

I have been so inspired by Clark & Amy’s food adventures when they travel.  I knew we could never live up to the standard of excellence they exhibit, but reading about their travels made me determined to step out of my safe-food rut.  And we did, hooray for us!

If there was a food theme on our trip it was barbeque.  Who knew both Charleston & Savannah were such meccas of barbeque!  And since we’re really not seafood lovers, BBQ it was.  We ate pulled pork, ribs, and brisket sandwiches—yum!  We also had terrific breakfasts, including some concoction of english muffins topped with sour cream, eggs, and avocado that was really divine.  Of course for me if it involves enough avocados, the rest is fairly irrelevant.

We had one fantastic dessert in Charleston.  I wanted chocolate cake REALLY badly, so we went to the swanky restaurant at the Mills House Hotel.  I couldn’t have chosen better.  The cake had several layers—a dense dark chocolate bottom, then a layer of softer cake, chocolate mousse filling, more cake and all topped with a dark chocolate ganache.   The only thing that made it possible for Russ (not a fan of dark chocolate) to eat any of it was the scoop of premium vanilla ice cream we also ordered—and he was still done long before the cake was gone.  I wish I’d been able to take a picture of the restaurant, but the lighting was elegantly dim so a picture wouldn’t have worked.  We were sitting in a corner booth right at the front.  We could see ahead of us through an open archway into several more seating areas.  Overhead in our area were two ceiling fans, the kind with great big wide blades instead of long narrow  blades.  Instead of being parallel to the ceiling the fans were perpendicular.  From our table one fan was right behind the other, so that it was almost like a flower with each section rotating at it’s own speed. Then in the next section we could see two more of these flower-like fans, and in the next section again.  We don’t know how many sections there were in the restaurant, though, because behind us and at the far end there were mirrors.  So from where we sat we saw an eternity of flower fans, circling gently.  We meant to get a better look when we were done by at that point we were fairly undone by the richness of the chocolate dessert and it was all we could do to make our way back to the car.

We also did a lot more shopping than normal on this trip.  We wanted to bring back souvenirs for the kids and our friends, a Christmas ornament (or 2), and something meaningful.  Oh, and I wanted some earrings. 

We had fun shopping in the City Market in Charleston.  I loved watching the artisans make the sweetgrass baskets.  We did NOT buy one—the prices were astronomical.  Not to say that the baskets weren’t worth what the price tags indicated, just that we will be living a whole different life before we spend $300 for a basket, regardless of how beautiful it is!

It took us a while to decide what Christmas ornament to buy in Charleston.  We were shopping early in our time there, and we didn’t yet know what image would be the most meaningful.  We could have bought a sweetgrass ornament, but I was interested to see that what looked so delicate in a whole basket just looked a little messy in something small like an ornament.  We ended up coming back to the market later in the day and buying a sand dollar ornament.  We were thrilled with the design that was silk-screened & painted on it.

Recognize it?  It was the steeple down the street from our hotel!

We also bought a beautiful print by a local artist that will remind us not only of Charleston, but of every beach trip we’ve ever loved.

And then, because we were by that point feeling very nostalgic, we bought a small painting as well.

 

In Savannah I was mostly looking for earrings—every time I tell my visiting teacher that I like her earrings, she tells me she got them in Savannah.  So I had the name of her store and we had a great time there.  Well—I had a great time, Russ was just really super patient.  So if you see me with some cool new silver & glass earrings, you don’t even have to ask.  Savannah.

We also had fun down on River Street, which runs right along the Savannah River.  The street was cobbled with stones that were brought over on ships as ballast.  There were all sorts of little shops, including two candy shops giving out samples of pralines, chocolate pralines, and gelato.  We ended up eating the pineapple gelato and buying some very fancy chocolate dipped & decorated marshmallows for Josh’s souvenir.  We thought (and rightly so) that he’d rather have a sweet treat than a knick-knack or a do-dad. 

Every time I heard a tour guide say that Savannah was built on a bluff I didn’t really register what they were saying—or what it meant.  Not until we walked down to River street did I get it.  This is how you get down to River street.

And it was every bit as steep as it looks there!

The original builders along here took advantage of this in an interesting way when they built Factor’s Row.  Factors were cotton traders, and these buildings were cotton warehouses fronting on river street (that you can see in the picture above) Then on the opposite side were offices that faced the town.  This picture shows the office side, with the bridge walkways connecting the offices to the bluff.  The walkways are called “Factor’s Walk.”

Here’s a picture I found on the internet that does a better job of showing the different levels of Factor’s Row.  On the far left is River Street—which used to be the warehouse level and now contains little shops.  Then if you look on the right you can see that there is a street level above that, and above that street level are the walks that connect the original Factor’s offices to the bluff. 

It was one of those things that was neat to see in person.

On our last morning there we went down to River street again and shopped at a small little market at the other end.  Russ bought some belts, I found some cool glow in the dark earrings for one of our friends, and I even bought another ornament.

We’d been ambivalent about buying an ornament in Savannah.  Nothing in particular stood out to us as noteworthy to hang on our tree.  The one image I would have loved would have been the fountain at Forsyth Park.  This fountain is really beautiful, and has the added interest of having been ordered from a mail-order catalog in the 1850’s for $2200. 

I’d been dying to see the fountain close up, and had nursed my purse-cam battery along so that I would be able to get a picture.  Unfortunately the experience was tainted by some aggressive locals who offered to take our picture and then got kind of ornery when we declined to buy their palmetto roses.  I didn’t want to be guilted or pressured into giving them money (and I was out of cash), and it left a bad taste in  my mouth.  Not the memory I want to hang on my tree now.  But it sure was beautiful.

Anyway, back to River Street and the market.  One of the venders there had all sorts of wooden creations, and I noticed she had a small wooden ornament of the Savannah River Bridge.  I’d loved the bridge from the first moment we saw it—it was a lot like the Cooper River Bridge in Charleston which I had loved watching.

I couldn’t get a better shot of it than that, except for the picture with the container ship.

When we drove over the bridge to leave Savannah, I stuck my camera out of the window and took a few shots just to see if I could get anything interesting.

When I saw the bridge ornament I knew that this was something that I could hang on the tree that would be a happy representation of Savannah, and remind us of the bridge in Charleston as well.