Travel: September 2012

During spring break of 2012 my husband and I went to Savannah, Georgia. We decided to take a spring break trip because it was my last year in college, I was extremely stressed out, and we needed an excuse for another trip. We decided that Savannah was close enough (ended up taking 13 hours) to drive and it was somewhere we had never been. On the way we decided to take ONLY back roads (something we decided against on the way back). That part was fun but after about 8 hours of it we were just ready to be there. The picture to the right is the pier right outside the hotel that we stayed at.

While at the beach we saw a TON of jellyfish washed up on the beach. We could also see them swimming in the water while we were standing on the pier. Surprisingly people were still swimming.

The following are pictures from two different cemeteries in Savannah. I believe they are the Bonaventure and Colonial Park cemeteries. We ended up having to take most of the pictures from our car because the mosquitoes were out of control. I had so many bites on my feet that I could hardly put my shoes on. The first section of pictures are from the Bonaventure cemetery (I believe). We took a few hours to walk/drive around and look.

This is the colonial park cemetery. It is located in downtown Savannah. We first walked through the cemetery during the day. Later, we took a ghost tour and stopped by the cemetery. The ghost story that went with this cemetery went something like this: A woman regularly passed near this cemetery on her way home from work. Almost every night she saw this handsome man who looked extremely tired and never acknowledged anyone. One night she decided to follow him. He walked to the cemetery and through the gate (quite literally through the bars of the gate) and disappeared. Pretty basic. The woman leading the tour encouraged all of the customers to take pictures of the cemetery at night. She said that she often had people take pictures where something creepy showed up. Anyway, I put my arms through the fence and took a picture with my cell phone. When I looked at the pictures with my husband nothing showed up (who really thought that it would have anyway) so I exited the camera on my phone and went about my business. About 30 seconds later my phone shut off on its own, turned itself back on, and the pictures I had just taken were gone. Everyone else in the group was talking about how they had nothing in their photos so I decided to mention what had happened to mine. The guide told me that what happened wasn't uncommon. She regularly had people with fully charged digital cameras take or attempt to take pictures and the cameras died while they were doing so. Creepy? A little. Ghost? Doubtful. A story I like to tell? You bet.

They used the back brick wall of the cemetery to bolt up broken headstones.

Right next to this awesome door was a sign from the city of Savannah saying there would be a meeting about how to demolish/clean up this building. Who needs to
clean this up? I would want to do this on purpose!

And we can't forget food. No trip is complete without eating at the local dives & eating things you have never heard of before.
On the left: pineapple upside down martini from the Ole Pink House. Tastes exactly like the cake. And I mean exactly like the cake. Prepare to have your mind blown. Also, they serve "crack sticks" which are sort of like cheese its made into crunchy sticks. We decided to have drinks in the tavern of after our ghost tour (this place is also considered haunted) Also, this place has some wonderful food. Southern sushi plus shrimp and cheese grit patties. Now that I have put it down in words I need to go back.

Below: Turkey, gravy, and french fry sandwich. Sounds like great southern food to me.

Pictures from our honeymoon in July 2011. This is the first time we went to Vieques, Puerto Rico. On the right is a picture of Isabelle from the ferry. Below is a picture of the street right after we got off the ferry.

To the right and below: Some pictures of our first day in Vieques. We are in Esperanza - our favorite side of the island to stay on! So anyway, here I am cheesing in front of the ocean. Below is my husband (not cheesing) in front of the ocean.

To the right is a little island right off the coast of Vieques. It's a great place to snorkel. Just to the right of this little island and under the water are these extremely round boulders bigger than cars. If only we had our underwater camera when we went!

And below: my favorite picture of the two of us. Taken from the same spot as the pictures above. I mean...it has only been my facebook picture for over a year now.

On the right: I think this was our first time eating at Belly Buttons. For breakfast we had a giant icecream and cookie sandwich.

Right off the strip in Esperanza. It was a bunch of broken, dead coral. The two large ones by my feet are brain coral.

Beach road that connects Sombe (Sun Bay) to the beach in the pictures above.

Below: My new husband looking cranky because I wanted to jump around and take pictures.

I think this may have been the first time we encountered the "wild" horses. Vieques has way too many horses. The owners don't have enough land/resources to keep them SO they brand them, let them roam freely, and go out and find them when they need them. It's a nice to see horses almost everywhere you go but it's sad when you see some that are just skin and bones.

A view of the street that we stayed on. We were about a block from the beach. We thought that since we were so young (I had just turned 21 and he was soon to be 24) we couldn't rent a car. Little did we know at the time - you can always rent a car in Vieques. BUT not having a car made this first trip even more fun. We had to walk to get to a lot of the places, it forced us to rent a scooter, and we spent most of our time in Esperanza, which is really where we wanted to be anyway.

We're on a boat about to go snorkeling. This couple owned their own boat and took people out to spots off of Sun Bay and to the boulder rocks I mentioned before. They also made us some great lunch! They told us about how they had lived on their boat while they built their house on the island. Later that year or the next they sold their business to some young guys.

Vieqeus from the boat.

Our feet - before Timmy's lets were covered in tattoos.

Once we rented our scooter we decided that we wanted to see some of the rest of the island. This is a view from the middle of the island. On this little adventure we almost died due to extremely large pot holes in every 3 feet.

And now....a bunch of pictures of a really old cool tree in Vieques.

I think this is a favorite!

Burned out ship?? We couldn't figure it out.

While on our scooters it started to pour. We had no where to pull over and take cover. We were soaked!

These are our sad "We're wet" faces.

At Bili. Best chicken quesadilla I have ever had! But...Bili has the best everything I have ever had.

Baby lizard that lived on the porch.

Our "kayak adventure". We rented a kayak for a day. We decided that we would take the kayak from Navio to some caves. We ended up on a beach that was only accessible by kayak where we found some huge sea glass. We also ended up on a beach below a lighthouse - also only accessible by water. We climbed up the side of some rocks and went through some thick bushes to get to the lighthouse. The doors had been filled with cement to keep people out but the back door had a hole busted in it. We went inside only to find graffiti and rubble. Toward the front of the light house was a spiral staircase. Front the bottom of the staircase we could hear what sounded like thousands of bees. Later we found out that going to the lighthouse is illegal.