a trip to the "Old South" for our first anniversary

Jarom and I went to Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina for our one year anniversary. Aside from our honeymoon, it was the most romantic trip ever! The historic architecture is really gorgeous and the lush plants, palm trees, flowering bushes and live oaks draped in Spanish moss were incredibly beautiful. The food was amazing - which isn't surprising since most of it is either fried in, smothered under or filled with butter and I'm pretty sure I ate seafood and dessert at almost every single meal. The weather was a little cool and rainy (in fact, one day we had record low temperatures for that time of year) but that didn't stop us from site-seeing every day from morning till night.

We flew into Charleston, rented a car and drove down to Savannah where we spent the first part of our trip. I especially loved the little parks/squares surrounded by historic houses that make up most of the tourist-y part of town. We stayed across the river from River Street, so we had a great view of the old docks from our room, along with the rest of the historic area. We went a couple of museums and to Tybee Island to see the lighthouse and discovered that it's a very laid back little seaside resort town. We also saw Fort Pulaski, which was really interesting. I was sad to leave Savannah, but....

Charleston was amazing! It was very different from Savannah in a lot of ways, and just as charming. It was little bigger and it wasn't laid out around garden squares. The houses all had verandas and long, narrow gardens and there were more regular people living in the historic part of town than I was expecting. We went on historic house tours, saw a lot of the churches, visited Fort Sumter and did a couple of architectural walking tours.

Last of all, we went to Middleton Place, which is an old rice plantation a few miles outside of Charleston, up the Ashley River. It was pretty rustic (as in, we had running water and flush indoor toilets in our room, but no internet or any sort of luxuries) and way out in the boonies, so although it was beautiful and relaxing, a couple of days was long enough to be there. There is a farm, blacksmith, wood shop, leather shop and pottery making, which gives a pretty interesting view of how self-sufficient a plantation could've been, which makes sense considering how far away it was from anything else. It was the perfect way to end our first anniversary trip!


Click on the images to see my pictures.

Savannah 2009 - Anniversary Part 1

Charleston 2009 - Anniversary Part 2