Savannah, day 2 – bike tour & party

Saturday 16 Jun: Savannah, birthday celebration part 2. Great sleep last night, despite the lapping as the ships pass and the heat. We aimed for an early walk in town before the sun gets too intense, but the dock master is late to collect our payment and we are grounded on Cloudy Bay till 11am. While waiting we had a fruitful research on our next port of call, and we now have a better idea where we can dock and even found an anchorage. When the dock master finally arrives we find out that the deal includes electricity …. damn! We could have had the aircon on all last night after all. We are quickly plugged in and we leave Cloudy Bay cooling down with all hatches closed.
Once in town, we sign up for a Royal Bike Taxi tour of the historical town with Keith, a very pleasant and knowledgeable guide. It was a one hour tour, at a slow pace, and we’ve learned so many interesting facts about Savannah’s history and its place in the US independence and civil war. Why is it that history is sooo boring at school yet so exciting when you learn it on-the-spot as an adult?
James Oglethorpe was sent by King George to setup the colony in 1733, and he planned to stay only 10 years then leave the pilgrims to it. He was clearly a visionary, as the current layout of the streets and squares of the historical town today is exactly how Oglethorpe designed it before he had the 1×2 mile area cut out of the forest. One of his rules was that 4 things were forbidden for the colonists: no slaves, no hard alcohol, no lawyers, no Catholics (Spanish were Catholics and they were the enemy in St. Augustine, the next colony south). Also, Savannah was almost a failed colony, as the farming families were very slow to settle here. But eventually they found cotton as their cash crop and it flourished. At independence (1776) the British returned and took the city back from America, but then vacated it again in 1782. It was the last English post in US.
We start the tour at the Davenport House, where we learn how a group of ladies formed the Historical Society to save this house from demolition. Then the Olde Pink House, a Georgian mansion built in 1771 for James Habersham Jr., one of Savannah’s most important early cotton factors and founding-family members.
And so on square after square, house after house, Keith tells us lots in interesting facts. No wonder Savannah is promoting itself as the hostess city of the South, and it welcomes 13 million tourists every year. It also hosts one of the largest St.Patrick’s parade in the US, with 3/4 mil people coming to attend the festivities. How on earth do they fit that many people here we wonder!
Last bit of the tour was on Jones Street, a very pretty street with a canopy of southern oak trees and the original pavement bricks.
At the end of our tour we also find out that Keith stars one episode of the “Everyday Humans” series, the life of a pedicab driver. After we say our good byes, Keith drops us at the Gallery Espresso where we cool off and have the best coffee yet, accompanied by delicious carrot cake and cherry cheese cake. It’s going to be a lots of calories day!
When we feel seriously chilled, we continue the hot walk through some more squares, ticking one by one the ones we haven’t seen yesterday. A rain shower interrupts our stroll, and it smells like summer rain. Geared with the plastic rain covers we return to Cloudy Bay to get ready for dinner.
At Keith’s recommendation, we have dinner at The Olde Pink House, built in 1771 and situated next to Reynolds Square. He vouches this restaurant has the best Lowcountry dinning (southern cuisine), and as usual we want to have a taste of the local dishes. The food was indeed amazing, such unexpected flavors and combinations. We wish we could eat there again. The venue itself is also very interesting, with 11 dinning rooms, all very different as decor.
For the evening we are off to town again, birthday celebrations part 2, this time we are not sleepy like the evening before! We have several stops, and by the end of the night our arms look bloody due to the red stamps we collected while entering various bars.
Smiles Dueling Pianos was very crowded, lots of bachelorette parties and live music (average quality). Brief stop, then off to the neighboring West, and then the Mata Hari, which is an speakeasy venue (one needs a password to get in, a tradition kept since the prohibition times). The venue is very nicely presented, but unfortunately the burlesque show was on vacation and there weren’t any people at the bar, so we left again quickly.
The best stop was at Alley Cat, an upmarket cocktail bar in a basement. And it is indeed a proper cocktail bar, with 20 pages menu and the most extensive display of drinks we have ever seen. We go bold and try the venue’s most popular cocktails which we enjoy very much.
By 2.30am the parties start to die down and we retire to Cloudy Bay after a great night out. It’s confirmed, Americans do like to party, and they could almost rival the Brits for getting drunk, but only after 2am. And it’s a happy drunk, no sign of any bad behavior. No one could rival the Brits for those bad habits!