Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

The weather forecast for Charleston was for rain today, and since I had to stick around Savannah for a while anyway, I decided to spend another night here.

I dropped off my bike for its 60k mile service with the odometer reading 59975. I wonder if that's the closest I've ever come to hitting the service interval on the nose? It's surprising that it was that close, because I made the appointment in Miami, about 650 miles ago.

I picked up the bike with enough time to spend the afternoon in Savannah's Historic District. I started with a visit to the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum, which has a fantastic collection of model ships, ranging from large scale fully rigged models to ships in bottles. Their collection ranges pretty widely, but they have a particular focus on ships that are relevant to Savannah's history (the kinds of ships used by colonists or slavers, the kinds of ships built in Savannah, ships that worked on the Savannah River) and ships that were named Savannah (including the SS Savannah, the first steam ship to cross the Atlantic; the USS Savannah, a WW2 cruiser; and the NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo ship]).

I spent the next couple of hours on a walking tour with a guide called Savannah Dan. It was a really informative glimpse into the history and architecture of the city. It's a very pretty city, which was spared burning at the end of Sherman's March for unclear reasons. I would probably have taken a lot of pictures, if it hadn't been overcast.

Afterwards, I had a tasty milkshake at Leopold's, and sat by the Savannah River, looking at the ships tied up along the waterfront (an eclectic mix: a tug with a crane, a three-masted sailing ship, a modern yacht, various ferries, and a steamship for cruises) and watching the cargo ships sail downriver.