Anniversary Trip: Day 3b, Savannah Food Tour and Leaving the South

Friday July 29, 2022

We woke up and made our way downstairs for breakfast where we met 2 other couples staying at McMillan Inn; one was from Michigan and the other was from Australia. They served us fruit, cheesy bacon grits, strawberry french toast, and fried chicken. It was delicious and I enjoyed all of it. After breakfast we looked around the house some more. We saw an old music box in the basement that was bigger than a record player; it played large metal disks which could be switched out. Unfortunately, the owners told us it wasn't working. Instead, they let us play big, thick discs on a huge phonograph. It wasn't quite a record player, but it was very similar.

The strawberry french toast was almost a bread pudding; it was our favorite.

The phonograph played disks that were about half an inch thick. So cool!

We packed up our things and left our bed and breakfast. First, we stopped by Forsyth Park, which has a famous fountain. Our tour guide for the ghost tour told us that the fountain was actually ordered from a Sears and Roebuck Catalog, and it was originally orange.

The cicadas were sure noisy, except for this dead one.

It's good they repainted the fountain white. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to tell where the statue ends and where Erik begins.

Next, we drove back to downtown Savannah for a food tasting tour. We waited inside Capital Bee Company and looked around at all their junk trinkets. Our tour guide, Country, told us there was a group of six ladies on their way that would join our tour. We panicked. "Is it a bachelorette party?!" No, it was a group of middle-aged women who left their husbands and children at home for a girls' trip. Whew! That was close. Our tour started by tasting several different honeys: frosted, snowberry, holly, chocolate, tupelo, raspberry, and frosted cinnamon. I think the meadowfoam honey was paired with gouda cheese, which tasted really good. We ended up buying frosted, tupelo, and meadowfoam.

Poor Erik was only one of 2 guys in the entire tour group.

The next stop on the tour was Cha Bella. The appeal of this restaurant is that they don't have a refrigerator; they make all of their food with fresh ingredients. They served us a deep-fried rice ball filled with spices and parmesan cheese served over marinara sauce. It definitely tasted fresh, but it was kind of a strange dish. Everyone else on the tour paid extra to order alcohol at every restaurant. I guess we saved around $100 by just drinking water.

We walked around some town squares next. Country told us some ghost stories and some history about the town of Savannah. After walking for a while, we finally arrived at our next restaurant: Zunzi's. It was a South African restaurant, which served us "the best chicken sandwich in Georgia." The sandwich basically had some hot sauce and Caesar salad dressing on it. It was good. We sat outside in the shade, but it was still hot and humid.

For our next tasting item, we walked to a "fancy gas station" called Parker's to sample a fried pork chop. Country told us that she was eating their fried chicken and fried porkchops with some friends. At the end of the gathering, there was plenty of leftover fried chicken, but the fried porkchops were all gone. It was okay.

Next, we walked to Mint To Be Mojito to try some empanadas. Everyone was paying extra for mojitos, so I asked if we could get one without alcohol. We tried the raspberry mock-jito, which was good, but it was mostly ice. I should have asked for little to no ice. The empanadas were good. We ate them in the back of the restaurant in the "speakeasy," which had a hidden door to conceal it back in the prohibition days.

We walked past Oglethorpe Square again, which is where Forrest Gump waited for the bus.

Our last stop was at Leopold's ice cream. We didn't actually go there because the line was all the way down the street. We stood across the street in the shade while Country cut in front of everyone in line and came back with butter pecan ice cream for us. It was good. Country said her boss wanted us to have tutti frutti flavor since it was invented at Leopold's, but there's just something more Southern about butter pecan ice cream.

We didn't try tutti frutti: rum ice cream with candied fruit and roasted pecans.

We walked back to Capital Bee Company while we ate our ice cream and willed the ice to melt in our mock-jito cup, which was now mostly iced mint leaves, limes, and raspberries. We quickly bought some honey and got back into our car to drive to the airport. Our flight flew out of Charleston, South Carolina, which was almost 2 hours away. The Charleston airport was pretty small, so we had no problems getting to our plane on time. We forgot to check in until late the night before, so we were in the C boarding group. We almost thought that we wouldn't be able to sit together, but we found 2 seats together and plopped out butts down on them. Our connection was in Denver, and our layover was 3 hours. We ate dinner at a decent restaurant called Root Down DIA. Erik ordered a bacon cheeseburger with siracha mayo, a pretzel bun, and sweet potato fries. I got the Colombian Griddled Cheese, which was 2 corn cakes with gouda, poblano pesto, crema, and pico de gallo. It was good, but it was overcooked on the bottom. We sat and charged our electronics while we waited for our late flight back to Salt Lake.

Anniversary Trip Day 3a: Anniversary Dinner and Savannah Ghost Tour

Thursday July 28, 2022

We woke up not too early and ate a hot breakfast in the hotel lobby. Afterwards, we packed up our things and got in the car to drive through South Carolina. We drove and drove all the way to Savannah, GA. We checked into a bed and breakfast that was originally an old boarding house from the 1880s called McMillan Inn.

All the old houses in Savannah have the main entrance on the second floor.

Erik surprised me with some chocolate-covered strawberries!

Our four-post bed was really high off the ground.

This fancy mirror was set up as a sliding barn door, but it didn't completely cover the doorway to the bathroom.

After checking in, relaxing in our room, and eating chocolate-covered strawberries, we headed out for an early dinner at Jazz'd Tapas. We ordered the tapas for 2, which gave each of us an appetizer and a dessert and four tapas to share.

Erik ordered 5 onion soup.

I had the coconut mushroom soup, which was surprisingly peppery. But still delicious.

We ordered Thai chicken lettuce wraps and blackened salmon.

Lamb chops

The cheese platter came with havarti dill, brie, smoked gouda, fruit, bread, and a grilled garlic clove.

Erik ordered creme brulé, and I got a brownie with salted caramel gelato.

We had a few extra minutes after dinner, so we waddled around downtown Savannah looking in some of the shops. We bought another magnet. Then we drove over to the meeting place for our next ghost tour: Savanah History and Haunts. Our tour guide was very friendly, and we were looking forward to the tour until a group of ten showed up as part of a bachelorette party. If they weren't already drunk, they came prepared with drinks in their hands. They wouldn't stop talking and kept interrupting our guide. He even asked them to be quiet a couple times, but they just stayed at the back of the group and kept chatting loudly. Fortunately, we lost them along the way. The tour guide's boss showed up to talk to him about the situation; maybe he also went back to make sure the bachelorette party didn't find us again. All I know is the tour got a lot better after they left.

The main thoroughfare in Savannah is lined with trees covered in Spanish moss.

We met in Oglethorpe square; Oglethorpe established Savannah as a military outpost to defend the colonies against the Spanish in Florida in the 1600s.

Savannah is so touristy; we saw dozens of horse-drawn carriages.

That's the bachelorette party in the background holding their drinks.

Our tour guide did a good job reenacting some of the stories as he told them. This is where a battle of the Revolutionary War was fought when the colonies lost many, many soldiers.

Another horse-drawn carriage, and the bachelorette party is gone!

The gates of Colonial Park Cemetery were pushed back when the road was expanded. Our guide happily informed us that there are bodies underneath the sidewalk and the road.

The Spanish moss almost seemed to glow at night next to the streetlamps.

After the ghost tour, we had to find our way back to our car on our own from the cemetery. We had to make sure to park on the correct street at the bed and breakfast since the street sweepers clean the roads every night. We explored the bed and breakfast a bit more before going to bed.

We sat on the patio swing for a while, but it was too humid to enjoy it very long.

McMillan Inn was full of antique everything!

We assumed that the red velvet cookies and other treats were complimentary.

Anniversary Trip: Day 2b, Dinner and a Ghost Tour in Ashville

After our tour of the Biltmore Mansion, we ate at Chestnut for dinner in Ashville. Erik made reservations previously. For an appetizer, we ordered the lobster bisque, which was the creamiest that we have ever had. I ordered fried green tomatoes, and Erik ordered the petite filet. We didn't want anything rich for dessert, so we tried the coconut panna cotta with watermelon and cantaloupe. I enjoyed my fried green tomatoes; it was something different and unique to the south. The coconut panna cotta was really light and enjoyable. It reminded me of a fancy and unique yogurt parfait.

The coconut panna cotta.

After dinner, we drove back to our hotel, Fairfield Inn and I took a short nap while Erik did some work on his laptop. Then we headed back to downtown Asheville for our ghost tour: Haunted Asheville. Our tour guide was a local high school math teacher, football coach, and part-time paranormal investigator. The group was so big that he used a microphone and 2 speakers, which hung from his belt. He told us stories about the author Thomas Wolfe who was at his brother's side in Asheville when he died of tuberculosis. Another story involved a man who convinced the city to invest its money in the stock market shortly before the great depression. As a result, he jumped off the highest building in town. Several other stories involved murders and subsequent executions of the likely-falsely-accused. I enjoyed the tour despite the bugs, but I think Erik just tolerated it. At the end, the tour guide showed us some pictures that some people of previous tours took of what they thought were ghosts. I wasn't convinced, but it was fun to see anyway.

In honor of the story about the man who jumped from this building, the city poured the concrete of the sidewalk in the shape of a bullseye.

To the right of this gargoyle are the symbols of the free masons.

Anniversary Trip, Day 2a: The Biltmore Mansion

I decided to give our Biltmore Mansion tour its own post since there are so many pictures!

 After our early lunch we drove about 5 minutes to the Biltmore estate for our tour. The Biltmore estate is a huge mansion built on over 10,000 acres of land in the 1890s. The property was gorgeous with well-kept landscape and lush gardens. Erik and I walked around the gardens before our tour started. It was really hot and humid and sweat was dripping down my back. I enjoyed walking around the gardens despite being sweaty and hot.

We walked through the forest for a few minutes to get from the parking lot to the estate.

This sculpture was called "Diana;" she is goddess of the countryside and of the moon.

The house kept getting bigger the closer we got to it.

Free money!

George Vanderbilt decided to build his mansion here because of this view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

This was supposed to be a fountain from Italy in the 1600s.

Erik really liked this covered walkway to the gardens

We walked around the main gardens and down to the conservatory in the distance

The conservatory was full of exotic plants from all over the world. There were several Mennonite families touring the estate too.

These ponds were called the Italian Gardens.

Wednesday July 27,2022

The inside of the Biltmore house was just as lavish as the gardens. We were given an audio tour guide to listen to as we walked through the house. There was no air conditioning, only fans. The inside was full of tapestries, etchings, and sculptures collected by George Vanderbilt. He insisted on having the best of everything inside his house, which makes Windsor Castle seem not so impressive. That guy had as much money or more than any British royalty. The tour took us about an hour and a half. We enjoyed seeing all the luxury and artistry of that huge mansion.

Waiting in line to go in the mansion

The main atrium

The banquet hall with its very own organ; notice the 400-year-old tapestries below the hunting trophies.

The private dining room for family meals

Vanderbilt collected works like these by Manet and Monet; he also liked Renoir.

These 3 tapestries in the hallway to the library are a set based on virtues: faith, prudence, and charity; they are 500 years old.

That's a Steinway piano in front of the prudence tapestry; how appropriate.

The library had 2 floors of books, a huge fireplace, and a very artistic ceiling.

Another view of the Blue Ridge mountains from the huge deck.

The music room had some strange instruments. It actually wasn't finished until after WWII when the US Government stored some valuable artwork there.

The spiral staircase was 5 stories high.

The upstairs sitting room looked more like a throne room.

The swimming pool was drained since it had a leak somewhere.

The basement had a swimming pool and a bowling alley.

After the tour, we went out to the old stable houses where the shops were. We bought a magnet but everything else was way too overpriced for me. We walked up the hill to our car and spent the next 20 minutes just driving off the Biltmore estate.

It takes a long time to drive off of a 10,000-acre property.