Walking the streets (Julie and Larry are literally walking down the middle of this street) in Savannah, you always see these huge overhanging liveoak trees with lots of Spanish moss hanging down from them. Very Southern!
The historic district of Savannah is laid out around many "squares", like giant "go-rounds" in New England. The squares have nice park benches and usually a war hero statue. I think this is Pulaski Square. Pulaski was a Revolutionary War hero that died at the siege of Savannah (same Pulaski that is celebrated in Chicago and same Pulaski from Fort Pulaski here).
We visited the Savannah History Museum in downtown Savannah. It was kind of small and Ho..Hum, but had a few interesting displays and an OK video explaining the early beginnings of Savannah. This is a Revolutioniary War display. OK...big deal....new uniforms and a new canon on new manekins made to look like the Revolutionary War.
This is one very interesting thing they had was just sitting there and totally unmarked. It was this Eli Whitney cotton gin. It was laid out with a bale of cotton, but just not signed at all, so most people just walked by, not understanding the significance or what it was. The importance of the cotton gin in this area was huge and I don't know how many original gins survive.
Then we visited "The Roundhouse" which is a really neat historic train "turntable" for moving and turning trains to work on them in the large semi-circilar barns, or to simply turn them the other direction on the tracks. This was somewhat disappointing too because the complex was huge but badly in need of restoration as were the many train cars and locomotives there. As such, we were not able to see many of the trains except from the outside and many of the buildings were not open and in disrepair. They're trying to do the work to make it into a Class A tourist destination, but they have a long way to go. It was fun to wander amoung the old trains and many buildings and when finished, it really will be cool.
They had trains in various stages of repair. This is the main large boiler from a steam locomotive and it has measurements all over it that seem to indicat someone is making a new one to replace it. Seen inside, it was too far rusted out to ever use again. The lower picture is the steam cylinder assembly from the locomotive. It looked like it had been repaired and was in primer waiting for paint. John S. would love this place!
After lunch, we visited the Owens-Thomas House which was built in 1819 and still survives in excellent condition, including the carriage house which also had slave quarters. It has been restored to the pre 1840 era, including elegant period furniture. Their one claim to fame is that the Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette stayed here when he was in Savannah. They have a guided tour with very knowledgeable docents and it is really an excellent place to tour.
On the way home, we stopped and got shrimp from a local seafood outlet that got them directly off the boats this morning, so they were very fresh and never frozen. They were quite good, even though they were just average size, unlike the really big ones we got from the shrimp boats on Florida's West coast.
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