Christmas in Savannah

In the past month or so, we’ve gone on three different trip. It’s been busy. Here are some highlights from our trip to Savannah, where my Mom, two sisters, two brothers-in-law, one nephew, and four family dogs live. Another sister and brother traveled to Savannah with their people, too, so it was a party.

But first, I realize that I never posted at all about my last trip to Savannah, a super-quick weekend that I completely squeezed into G’s busy calendar before she headed back to Brazil. For that trip, we went full-on tourist. We checked out the The Pirate’s House, where G loved the biscuits. We visited Tybee Island. although it was a windy day with a jellyfish warning, so we didn’t linger too long.

We headed to The Crab Shack, which is all messy outdoor dining — think seafood and barbecue, with a hole in the middle of the table so you can toss the shells and bones as you go.

It’s also a super-fun kids’ destination, with alligators, wild birds, stray cats, and photo ops galore.

By Gi’s special request, we went on a Ghost Tour with Afterlife Tours that was fantastic. There was plenty of true, verifiable history in the many stories, and they were spooky enough on their own, before you even got to the paranormal part. Here’s our guide scaring us, and next to it, one of the houses that we talked about: it’s been six months now, so I don’t remember the details, but I absolutely will never enter it.

My sister and her family came along, too, and since our visit, they’ve gone on another ghost tour with Afterlife.

Of course, we also had to hit Leopold’s for ice cream as well as our kids’ childhood favorite: a golf cart ride. G loved the golf cart and was able to get pretty close to a deer, who knows the folks who live in The Landings are a peaceful people.

But I digress. The rest of my family has been coming to Savannah for years, so we didn’t have to hit all the tourist places, but we did have plenty of fun. One of the girls’ favorites, if you can believe it, is just going to The Landings’ gym, because it is so gorgeous and well-equipped and the locker room is basically a spa. They were pretty much obsessed with getting a daily workout in, plus my mom’s apartment is next to a state park, and we took some time to explore our AirBnB’s neighborhood, which wasn’t too exciting, but did boast a fabulous Little Free Library. Really, it’s probably a good thing that we got in so much exercise, because there was also tons of eating. Here’s our Christmas Eve spread.

We also had fun walking around downtown Savannah, which is always fantastic. In the Starland District there’s tons of vintage and fun stuff to check out. At one point we came across this cocktail infusion bar, which I believe is by Fête, and I took pictures because I thought it was such a great business idea, especially in Savannah, which is just absolutely jammed with bachelorette parties on the weekends.

And of course it doesn’t matter how often we walk along River Street, because there’s always more to see each time. Since it was the holidays, there were extra market stalls. One of my sisters and I absolutely loved AI to You. She treated herself to a lovely little chain ring, and I loved the earrings that were huge and dramatic and super-light (especially the Lota, the Agora, and the Stav –why yes, I am taking notes for future wish lists). Plus the whole area around the river is just so picturesque: I took this as we headed for home.

Two more random pictures. First, we have a long-held grab bag tradition: each person in the family gets a gift that costs $15, and then people get to choose or steal a gift one at a time. It’s quite competitive in that each person wants to purchase a gift with enough broad appeal that everyone will want to steal from each other. One year I triumphed by filling a frame I already had with family photos, and there may or may not have been some tears. This year M and I both bought dog-related items: four out of five of my siblings have dogs and love them very deeply. I honestly can’t even remember what I ended up with this year, because I was more excited about taking custody of other family members’ gifts. Cute W ended up with a friendship bracelet making kit, so I stole the threads for my embroidery, and J ended up with Tarot Cards, but she deemed them “too spooky” after her reading hit a little too close to home. So now I’m thinking that 2025 is the year I’ll learn to read Tarot Cards: why not?

And finally, I had to take a picture of one of my mom’s plants because I just love it so much. I truly covet it, but I know that I couldn’t ever have it in my house because as much as this still image looks like a flock of butterflies, you should see it when there’s a draft in the room and the leaves all start fluttering. Our kitties would totally attack it. So I’ll just enjoy visiting Mom’s.

We had a lovely trip, but of course it was busy and somehow exhausting even though nothing was particularly taxing. And then our return home was a bit of a nightmare. Before we even left for the airport, we found out that our first flight would be delayed enough that we’d miss our connecting flight. While the girls and I ate fried green tomatoes and other Southern treats with my sister on the back porch of the Driftaway Cafe, Cute W paced while on the phone with customer service, occasionally pausing by the table to grab a bite of something. We switched to a new flight, which meant a race to the airport. After some minor delays, we appeared to be back on track until we were so close to home. So close that we were circling over Albany airport, but we weren’t permitted to land because it was during that crazy fog that we had at the end of December. We circled, and circled, and circled, and we never did get permission to fly, but then we had to land somewhere, so they diverted us to Pittsburgh. When we arrived in Pittsburgh, it was after 2 am, and we were informed that we should pick up our baggage at the carousel and then report back for a flight scheduled for 10:50 am. Our crowd of cranky people probably waited at the baggage carousel for about 45 minutes before they said, whoops, actually, we would not be getting our luggage, after all. We are fortunate enough to be able to drop money on a cab and a hotel room, and by the morning, we decided it would be funny to send a bunch of tourist-style photos to my family’s group text until they realized that we were in Pittsburgh. Here’s one of them.

Eventually we made it home, and we were damn glad to be there. The return definitely gave us I’m-never-flying-again vibes, but Cute W and I already had our trip booked for a flight just five days later. More on that soon.