The beautiful Savannah in Georgia

Sunday 23.05 Dublin-Savannah (Georgia)

At 08:50 we get in the car and continue heading east. The hotel even offered a small breakfast, but that saves money and a coffee is quite pleasant in the morning.

There are only 100 miles to Savannah. The road looks just like yesterday: straight and lined with trees. There are constantly tire remnants from burst car tires along the edge of the road and occasionally a dead animal. In the further course of this journey, these will be "dead tires and dead animals". We pass an endless number of police patrols undisturbed and it is a mystery where they always suddenly come from and stop speeders. At 10:45 we already check into our hotel in Savannah - the Best Western Promenade.

We go to the City Market, a small pedestrian zone around the corner from the hotel. Over 200 years ago, this was the market where farmers and fishermen offered their products. Today there are small shops and restaurants here, and there is live music outdoors on weekends. These are really good people who sing here.

We buy a $25 ticket for the hop-on-hop-off trolley for the city tour and start our city tour. It is nice and quiet - it is Pentecost Sunday and it is pleasantly warm, around 30 degrees.

Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia and was founded in 1733 by English General Oglethorpe at the same time as the state of Georgia, in order to prevent possible Spanish incursions from Florida.

Oglethorpe designed the city on the drawing board and had 24 squares in the style of small parks created at the intersections of the streets, 21 of which still exist today. These shady squares adorned with fountains, obelisks, and statues are surrounded by villas from the 18th and 19th centuries, which are sometimes hardly visible behind wrought-iron fences in lush gardens.

On these beautiful little squares, we are surrounded by tall trees with "Spanish Moss", these air roots that have meter-long arms here, which intertwine and hang from the trees everywhere.

We get off the trolley several times and enjoy the walkways through this peaceful and beautiful environment in shade and sun and reach Forsyth Park. A beautiful fountain is located here and we sit on a bench for a moment and enjoy the first day of vacation. Fragrant camellia trees stand around us.

We repeatedly board our tour trolley and get off several times to take pictures of the great houses and gardens in Savannah. We sit in the shade of old trees in several of the beautiful small squares and also learn about Tomo-Chi-Chi, an Indian chief who had a very good relationship with the English, even received at the English court in 1734. At his request, he was buried here in 1739 - in the vicinity of his British friends - in Wright Square, and this with military honors from the English!

In the end, we are back at the City Market and listen to the good live music while having a beer. It starts to storm at 8:00 p.m. and we seek shelter under the awning of a restaurant. It pours from time to time, then stops, lightning.

We cannot really tear ourselves away from the beautiful air and the now cool temperatures and the spectacle around us, and when we finally want to do it at 9:00 p.m., we are in the middle of a cloudburst.

In several stages, across restaurants whose outdoor seating is under awnings, and through a hotel lobby (front door, back door), we make our way to our hotel and arrive there soaking wet. The TV shows the appropriate weather warning and it continues to storm until late after 10:00 p.m.