Savannah, Georgia

Tuesday we spent onboard the blue bus driving north from Daytona Beach, Florida to Savannah - took the best part of 5 hours. Beautiful roads driving on the interstate. Savannah was planned on paper before it was built and the town consisted of 24 'squares' - now down to 21 - but it's basically a grid system of straight roads. The downtown map is very easy to read. As soon as we'd found a place to stay at 4pm, we drove downtown - 6 miles or so - parked the car - and went exploring. Worked out the program for Wednesday - booked a tour and paddle boat steam ride. Found a great bar (Vic's on the River) with a happy 'hour' from 4-7pm and snapped the first photo from the verandah with the paddle steamer in the background. Noice! It was previously one of the old cotton trading offices - the price of cotton was once determined from these buildings for the entire world at one point in history!

Wednesday morning we were picked up by the 'Old Savannah Tours' company shuttle and taken downtown to begin our tour. Janice, the bus driver, was a complete 'scream' and pointed out interesting places along the way. The second photo was taken from the tram, tried to get a photo of one of the tree lined squares - complete with the 'Spanish Moss' (a bromeliad really). Learnt a lot about that 'moss' and how it contains 'parasitic creatures' which bury themselves in your skin - do not touch or play with!!!

Had a great time on this sunny day. Too much to tell on this blog, but Savannah is a beautiful tourist town with lots of history. Just don't tell anybody that you're from a northern state (Yankee) - Australian convict stock are OK.

Enjoyed our steam boat tour. Savannah is currently the 4th busiest port in the USA; 9th busiest in the world! 2500 ships per annum unload - with up to 10 000 containers on each ship - that means 10 000 trucks required to cart the loads etc etc - lots of infrastructure required!

We took photos of the riverfront from the steam boat and us after we had disembarked. We would like to return because we just couldn't do it 'all' in one day. "Y'all come back now!"