Savanna was my great hope of seeing some real ”Southern Living”, and with the Queen of Southern Food (aka: Paula Deen, from Food Network) and with great promises to see a lot of Historic Areas downtown (courtesy of Lonely Planet), it sounded like the place for seeing some more of the old south.

We arrived from Charleston, which had already given us a good taste of “The South” than we had expected, to Tybee Island, just 15 miles / 24 km from town. We arrived just before sunset to the campground and found one of the last spots. The security guy told us that the beach was just five minutes walk away, so we debated if we should go there before or after dinner. Sabine won and we went before dinner.

The weather was very nice, around 85 degrees / 30 C with a nice breeze, and just at the beach there was a bar (beach shack) with live music. We bailed out of our potential dinner plans and decided to sit down for a beer and some food. This was probably the best decision we have made for a while – we each got ½ pound of sautéed shrimp (Sabine and me, Felix got some of ours) rice and beans and a Jamaican beer, that was really, really tasty. The music was mountain music, but this time heavy on the Irish side, and well played, so it was fun (Felix was dancing with some chicks in killer heels about ten times his age, which was a very entertaining sight in itself 🙂 )

The next day we decided to stay at the island and go to the beach, for some R&R. The weather was great and the water was warm and nice – the only problem was that the supermarket didn’t want to sell us any beer on a Sunday, but we still had some. Saved by the bell. Felix was a little bit chicken about the waves, as usual, but was playing around on the beach and in the water and had a great time. That evening we BBQ’ed on the beach, with a near perfect full moon rising in front of us.

The next day we went into Savannah to take a look and it does have a lot of flaire, and an Art and Design University which dominates the city, but maybe it is just our taste, but Charleston gave us much more the feeling of an old town. Savannah has large, wide roads, evidence of the wealth of the city; Charleston has narrow, interesting alleys and looks more grown than planned. Savannah has large buildings, landmarks even, making the city special to look at. Charleston has many “family homes” which catch the eye. Both have lots of touristy areas of course, but all in all we liked Charleston much better.

We decided to go back to the campground to eat, but actually ended up going to the beach shack again (the shrimp were that good!) after a somewhat failed attempt to take pictures of the perfect full moon rising over the ocean.

The next day we got up a bit late and enjoyed the pool for a while before we hit the road. We were now two days ahead of ourselves and wanted to try to go to a beach (or two) in Florida on the way down to Miami. Who knows, maybe we even can surf a bit!!