Month: November 2017

Our trip to Champagne country in France began with a visit to Chartres Cathedral.  Built in the 12^th century, it is the 5^th cathedral on the site since the 4^th century.  The feature that Chartres has is its spectacular stained glass windows, which I couldn’t capture all that well with the camera I was using back then.

Our next stop was Taittinger Champagne Cellars.  Although the company was formed in the 18^th century, many of the cellars have been there since the 4^th.  The tunnels and caves were dark and cool and the champagne was light and smooth.

By this time in my mom’s life, she was unable to drink alcohol any more due to medications she was taking.  So I would drink her share too.  This gave me a couple sample glasses of the champagne they produce.

After Taittinger’s, but before lunch, we visited Reims (or Rheims) Cathedral.  This was the coronation cathedral for all but three of the kings of France.  The cathedral was severely bombed during World War II.  Some of the stone even melted.  The windows at each end of the cathedral were restored, but the windows on the sides were replaced with white glass.  One of the chapels contains stained glass windows made by Chagall.

The cathedral also has a black Madonna and child.  This was because the earlier pagean goddess of the area was black and the early Christians wanted to give people something to which they could relate.

Lunch was in a lovely restaurant near the cathedral.  It was a three course meal included in the price of the tour that consisted of paté de foie grois, followed by mixed pork and beef with a timbale of vegetables and another of potatoes (all of which had rich sauces), and mousse a l’orange for dessert.  This was accompanied by a glass of a light Chardonnay with the paté, two glasses of a dry red wine with the main course, and a glass of sweet rosé with dessert.  For me, this meant eight glasses of wine.  They were all small glasses, but it was still eight glasses of wine.  I was feeling no pain by the time we left the restaurant and we still had one more stop to go before heading back to Paris.

Our last stop was the town of Epernay and the caves of Möet and Chandon (founded in 1749).  This is where Dom Perignon is made.  Dom Perignon is the name of the monk who is credited with inventing the method for making champagne.

Along with the various types of champagne they make, they also had on hand a cask of port that belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.  He had been a friend of Jean-Remy Möet, grandson of the founder.  Napoleon would take bottles of Möet champagne with him when he went to fight his battles.  That was how their champagne became known in other countries.  They still have the largest percent of the export market of all French champagnes.  Napoleon left his cask of port behind to pick up later, but never returned to get it.  It still sits there, waiting.

By the time we left Epernay, I was ready for a nap.  Fortunately we only needed to return to Paris and get to our hotel.  The lunch had been large enough that no dinner was needed that night.  Just a couple of items from the small shop in between Cityrama and the hotel would do.  I kept pretty quiet and Mom steered me along.  So, to the casual observer, nothing appeared to be amiss.  But we both knew I was pretty well schnozzled, snockered, squiffy, and soused.  It was definitely the most inebriated I have ever been on any trip I have taken.

The cab driver from the airport to the hotel on a 2000 return trip to Paris was quite entertaining.  He swore at all the other drivers and kept up a running commentary in a mixture of French and English.  This was one of those times when I was trying hard not to watch what he was doing and just keep praying (when not answering one of his questions).  Mom kept up a running prayer, eyes closed.  I felt that I was doing well not to let out a scream at any of several points.  On a trip earlier this year, I actually did let out something between a gasp and a small scream while being driven from the airport to the hotel in London.

I planned and booked the entire trip myself.  The Paris version of Grey Lines (which is called Cityrama) was just around the corner from the hotel where we were staying.  So we had some days when we stayed in Paris and explored the city and others when we zipped around the corner and got on a tour coach to some place fun for the day.

At one time the hotel had been an apartment building, with an apartment (flat) on each floor.  Our room seemed to have been the sitting room of the apartment that had been on our floor.  It was light, airy, and roomy.  It also had a lovely balcony.  We could see the Tuileries garden, the Musee d’Orsay and the river when we looked in one direction, and Sacre Coeur in the other.  You would have thought that this would be an expensive hotel, but it wasn’t.  The price even included breakfast.

The hotel was just up the road, about a half a block, from the Louvre.  We walked down to the Tuileries, hung a left, and we were there.  I had learned of a second entrance to the museum that didn’t involve standing on line forever in the courtyard and entering through the pyramid.  We gave it try and found there was no line at all until we were inside under the pyramid and on the line for the actual entrance ticket.  Slick deal!  Did I feel guilty about all of the people waiting in that interminably long line?  Nope.  Normally I would have been with them (and on my first trip to Paris, I had been).

They had an exhibition of Rembrandt’s etchings in galleries in the Sully wing.  That’s where we began.  Then we went and said, “Hi” to the Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa (as well as a few other masterpieces) in the Donan wing.  When I had seen the Mona Lisa before, I hadn’t been able to get much of a view.  Too many people.  This time I was able to see it quite well and linger in front of her for a bit.

We had some lunch in the museum, then went on to explore the English artists (Constable, Turner, Gainesboro), followed by the period furniture and the Napoleon III rooms in the Richeleau wing.  By the time we were done, we were worn out.  We had dinner at a café just across the street from the Louvre which faced the golden statue of Joan of Arc, headed around the corner and up the Rue de St Roch to the hotel.

The day we went to the Musee d’Orsay was the day we ended up in the “line that snaked along forever”.  Unfortunately, I had chosen the day that the Louvre and most other museums were closed.  Well, so did everyone else.  We inched along for a good hour before we finally made it into the museum.  But, at least we spent most of the time on the side of the museum facing the Seine.  So we had something to watch.

I am a huge fan of the French Impressionists.  This museum was chock full of many of my favorite paintings, including those from which I had created my own version by attempting to copy a photo in an art book.  I was very surprised to find that the original of the Degas painting “L’etoile” was about the same size as the version I had painted of it.  I somehow expected the originals of all these works to be so much larger.  We spent much of the day there, having lunch in their café.  I found that the building itself was fascinating as it was a former rail station.  There were some men repairing one of the massive clocks high up above the galleries.

As we explored the city, I kept thinking of the film “An American in Paris” and imagined Gene Kelly gliding by.  Most of what we wanted to see in Paris itself was fairly easy walking distance from the hotel.  One day we walked up the Rue de Pyramides to Avenue de l’Opera.  We visited the Paris Opera — the Palais Garnier.  The exterior was in scaffolding, so I couldn’t get any really decent photos of it.  But I did get some good shots of the grand staircase.

We were disappointed to find that we could not tour the lower levels — especially the lake.  Yes, there really is a lake.  I suppose that there just isn’t a safe or convenient way to get tourists down there.  It probably would be rather boring in reality anyway.  The romantic image in our minds is more intriguing.

Because the water table was so high and the foundations needed to be so deep, the builders flooded one of the subterranean levels to have the pressure inside of the building counteract the pressure being exerted by the water outside of the building.  Ingenious really.  But that also means the water would be wall to wall.

We came back down towards the hotel via a route that allowed us to take in the Place Vendome and the Place du Concorde.  The Place Vendome is a grouping of very expensive shops (such as Chanel and Cartier), restaurants, hotels (such as the Ritz) and flats.  This is where Frederic Chopin and Coco Chanel both lived.

During the French Revolution, the Place du Concorde was renamed the Place du Revolution and was where the guillotine was set up to execute the more important figures such as King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, Princess Elisabeth of France, Charlotte Corday, Madame du Barry, Georges Danton, and Maximilien Robespierre.  The obelisk in the center of the square is Egyptian, from the time of Ramses II and is said to be located on the spot where the guillotine used to be.  In 2000, there was a very large Ferris wheel erected in the square for the millennium celebrations.

Also connected to the Revolution was the church at the top of the street our hotel was on, Saint Roch.  The church had been built in the 1600s.  The Marquis de Sade was married there in the 1700s.  Several battles during the Revolution were fought around the church, including one in which a young lieutenant named Napoleon distinguished himself.  The façade of the church and the steps leading to it are pock-marked with bullet holes and damage from explosions.  Inside are several chapels.  The one Mom and I chose to sit down in was dedicated to the French Jews that had perished in the concentration camps during World War II.  The inscription on its wall says, “Mon Dieu, fait de moi un instrument du votre paix” — “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

Our last day spent in Paris, we walked over to the Isle de Cite, which was the island on which Paris was originally founded.  The Romans mentioned the island as being walled with wooden bridges in the 300s.  Our first stop was l’Conciergerie.  This had been where most the roughly 2,900 people guillotined during the Reign of Terror were imprisoned.  It is a pretty large building and was fascinating to visit — sort of like a French version of the Tower of London.  They had a recreation of Marie Antoinette’s cell, complete with a wax representation of her.  Parts of the building are medieval.

From l’Conciergerie, we went to Saint Chappelle.  This royal chapel was built in the 13^th century, by the king who later became known as Saint Louis (Louis IX), as part of the palace what was there at the time in order to house the crown of thorns, a piece of the cross, the lance that had pierced Christ’s side, and other relics.  The chapel was gorgeous.  It often is referred to as a jewel box and I would agree.  During the French Revolution, much damage was done to the chapel and the relics were dispersed.

After lunch in a café near Notre Dame, we visited Notre Dame.  Although we had been there before, it had been while on a tour, so it had been a relatively quick visit and rather overwhelming.  This time, we had all the time we wanted.  We not only explored every nook and cranny, but also spent some time just sitting in one of the pews (near the statue of Joan of Arc) and soaking it in.  The cathedral began being built in 1163.  It is enormous and quite dark inside.  I am looking forward to visiting it again with a digital camera that will be able to better capture the interior.  There are a few fairly decent shots included with this post.

In the next few posts, we’ll continue our time in France with visits to the Champagne Region, the Loire Valley, Normandy, Fontainebleau & Versailles, Monet’s house, plus the village where Van Gogh died.

In 1999 Mom and I both had enough frequent flyer miles to fly to London for free.  So we decided to go for my birthday in mid-December.  We liked the idea of the Fielding Hotel, which was at the intersection of two gas lit, cobblestoned, pedestrian-only streets near the Royal Opera House.  The Fielding was a stone’s throw from where Henry Fielding’s house had been and dated to the same period — the early 1700s.

Henry Fielding had been the author of the novel “Tom Jones”.  But he had also been a magistrate at the Bow Street Magistrate Court just across the street from the Royal Opera House.  He and his brother formed the first police force in 1749, called the Bow Street Runners.

Since the hotel was located in a former house, it had no lift (elevator).  Fortunately we knew that and packed accordingly.  We each brought one small case (a small version of the roller bags that people now bring on airplanes as carry-ons) plus a shoulder bag and wore everything multiple times.  In addition, I had a large duffle bag packed flat inside of my case to hold our clothing on the way home so we could pack the presents we planned to buy in the more structured cases.  The room was in the back of the building, which had a sloped roof.  The bathroom was down a half flight of stairs.  Getting ready to go out took planning to avoid traveling up and down the stairs multiple times.  We also left a light on down below when we went to bed should one of us need to negotiate the stairs in the middle of the night.

After settling in at the hotel, we went for a walk in the area, had lunch and then stopped in at Covent Garden to see what was going on there.  They always have musicians or singers performing for free.  We listened to two violinists and a cellist prior to two flutists.  We poked around in the various shops to pick up some Christmas gifts for family members and friends.  Covent Garden was decorated for Christmas and was very festive.

The next day, we traveled over to the Kensington area to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum.  They were having a special exhibit of costumes from the film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and Joseph Fiennes.  After having lunch in the museum (they have a very good cafeteria), we headed for Harrods for some more Christmas shopping.

Harrods had a great pet section with lots of fun dog toys.  Bill Clinton was President at the time.  They had toys of both him and Tony Blair (who was Prime Minister).  I found out when going through Customs back in the States that dog toys are custom free.  Who knew?  Once we were done shopping, we went for a cream tea just across the street.  That filled us up enough that supper wasn’t necessary.

The following day we visited Prince Henry’s Room on Fleet Street.  Prince Henry was King James I’s eldest son.  But he died young and so his brother Charles I became king instead.  Charles was the one who lost his head to Oliver Cromwell.  The Great Fire of 1666 stopped just shortly before it would have reached this building, making it one of the few buildings prior to 1666 to survive.

The room was a museum dedicated to Samuel Pepys at the time.  He was the 17^th century diarist who wrote about the English Civil War and the Restoration of King Charles II to the throne.  He also wrote about both the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666.  Mom and I were the only people there, so the guide chatted with us quite freely.

He was a proponent of the theory that Sweeney Todd had been a real person (I have a book that says that he was and lays out his life).  According to both the book and this guide, the “real” Sweeney Todd lived in the 18^th century.  The guide pointed out where Todd’s barbershop used to be next to St Dunstan’s Church.  He said the Demon Barber of Fleet Street was found out when the aroma of the remains of the bodies that had been placed in the crypt of St Dunstan’s (his cellar connected to the crypts of the church) wafted up into the church.  Missus Lovett’s pie shop was supposedly in the lane next to the Royal Courts of Justice.  So the solicitors, barristers and judges likely were partaking of them.

The guide also pointed out the figure on the building opposite Prince Henry’s Room as Lady Caroline Lamb dressed as a pageboy.  Lady Caroline Lamb was the wife of Viscount Melbourne who was Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister (and so memorably played in the Masterpiece series by Rufus Sewell).  Lady Caroline had a very famous affair with Lord Byron and was the person who said that he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.

From Prince Henry’s Room, we went to Doctor Samuel Johnson’s House in Gough Square.  It was like finding our way through a maze to get there.  The house, which had been built in the late 17^th century, had been restored to what it would have looked like when Doctor Johnson lived there in the 18^th century.  He compiled his famous dictionary on the top floor.

On our way back to our hotel, we decided to stop in at the Temple Church (one of our favorite places in London).  There was a private service going on at the time and the church was closed to the public.  We could hear “O Come All Ye Faithful” being sung and sat down on a bench just outside of the ancient door to the original church built by the Knights Templar to listen before heading back to the hotel and to dinner at a nearby pub — the White Lion.

On the day of my birthday, we started out with a visit to the Jewel Tower.  It had been built in the 1360s as King Edward III’s treasury and part of Westminster Palace.  It and Westminster Hall are all that are now left of that palace.  From there, we crossed Westminster Bridge to visit the museum dedicated to Florence Nightingale in St Thomas Hospital.  My mom had once thought about becoming a nurse, but went into social work instead.  She had always admired Florence Nightingale.

That evening, we had booked dinner at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand where they offered a 3-course meal at the early dinner seating on Sunday’s for £19.25 (which would have been about $30).  Simpson’s has been in existence since 1828.  Dickens, Gladstone and Disraeli were regular patrons.  I recorded in my journal that I had crab with lemon mayonnaise, followed by the Roast Beef Dinner (roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and slow roasted carrots) and Bubble and Squeak, plus a plum crumble tart.  Looking at the restaurant’s website, the Roast Beef Dinner alone is now £35 (roughly $45).  Bubble and Squeak is made with mashed potatoes and cabbage (I often use a cheesy mashed potato and add both cabbage and shredded carrots).  It gets its name from the noise it makes while cooking.

The next day, we visited Charles Dickens’ house.  A more perfect place to visit at Christmas time, I could not imagine.  More of the house was open than when we had visited before, but it was now a self-guided tour instead of being with a costumed guide.  I missed the guide we had on our first visit.  He had been an absolute delight.  By the time we left, it was much colder and raining hard.  So we took a cab to Marks & Spencer to buy the last of (and majority of) our gifts.

We were unaware that Marks & Spencer didn’t take credit cards.  They also didn’t have a toilet for public use.  So, in order to purchase the items we had collected, we needed to shield each other while digging into the areas on our persons where we had secreted the bulk of our cash.  That had to have been an odd sight.  Fortunately we had enough on us.

We didn’t think that the personnel in the store were terribly friendly.  In fact, although we told them what we were doing and to hang on to our items until we got out the cash to pay for them, they were in the process of returning them to the racks and counters from which we had picked them up when we produced the necessary.  If it hadn’t been raining heavily and our last day in London, we would have walked out and gone elsewhere.  But we re-gathered the items, paid for them, and hailed another taxi to get us back to the hotel.  Actually we went to the American Express office next door to Simpson’s-in-the-Strand to get some more cash — just enough for dinner that night, breakfast the following day, and the cab ride to Victoria Station to get the train to Gatwick (which was the airport that had a direct flight to Minneapolis back then).  The rain had let up by then, so we were able to walk up the road to our hotel without getting ourselves or our packages drenched.

That night we went to a performance of “The Woman in Black” at the Fortune Theatre.  Our seats were in the front row of the upper circle.  This was about two stories above the stage with very steeply raked stairs.  We were terrified just getting to our seats.  The play was very cleverly done with just two actors and a minimum of props.  It was probably the scariest play I’ve ever seen.  Afterwards we walked back to our hotel along a gas lit, cobblestoned, narrow, pedestrian-only street.  I leaned over to Mom and said, “All we need now is a fog and Jack the Ripper”.  “Thanks”, she said.

Having grown up in Texas, which is where the Old South meets the Wild West, I had always been curious about the real South.  I saw photos of the houses in Charleston, SC, or read Gone With the Wind, or saw films set on plantations and thought that I’d like to see all of that someday.  The trip down the East Coast in 1999 was my first exposure to South Carolina and Georgia.

From Myrtle Beach, we continued down the South Carolina coast to Brookgreen Gardens.  This is a sculpture garden created in the 1930s from four rice plantations that had fallen into ruin after the American Civil War.  One of the former plantations (The Oaks) had been owned by the husband of Aaron Burr’s daughter, Theodosia, who disappeared at sea during the War of 1812 when sailing from Georgetown, South Carolina to New York City.

After a stop in Georgetown, we went on to Charleston, South Carolina, named after King Charles II of England and founded in 1670.  Portions of both the American Revolution and the American Civil War were fought at Charleston.  Revolutionary War action included the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in 1776 and the Siege of Charleston in 1780.  The first full battle of the Civil War occurred in April of 1861 when confederate General Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, which was held by the Union at the time.  In 1865, Union General Sherman marched into Charleston.  South Carolina had been the first state to secede from the Union so Sherman wanted to punish them after he completed his march to the sea.

The afternoon we arrived, we had a walking tour around the historic area of town.  We saw the oldest museum in the country, which was founded in 1773.  The Exchange and Provost, which has been a custom house, a mercantile exchange, a barracks, and a military prison in its long history also hosted several events for George Washington.  I found on this trip that good old George had pretty much been everywhere — busy fella.

The Old Slave Mart had been turned into an African American museum.  We saw Cabbage Row (1783) which was portrayed in Gershwin’s “Porgy & Bess” as Catfish Row.  The Rainbow Row, consists of colorfully painted houses that were built in the 1700s.  We went in a house that was near the Battery and learned about a period of time in 1718 when the pirate Blackbeard terrorized the city.  He managed to do quite a bit of plundering plus kidnapping and holding people for ransom before the city finally managed to convince him to move on.

We began the following day with a visit to Magnolia Plantation.  This rice plantation was owned by the Drayton Family beginning in 1670.  The original house had burned down in 1810.  Sherman burned down the second house in 1865.  The current house was built elsewhere in the 1700s, taken apart and rebuilt on the foundations of the original house.  Then it was enlarged.  So the house is a combination of Colonial and Victorian, with plantation-style verandas.

We toured the entire house.  The rooms were large and the ceilings were high (so the heat would rise up away from the people).  I remember houses in Texas with fourteen foot ceilings for the same reason, but they weren’t plantations.  They were just old houses.

In one area of the porch on the second floor was a bench designed for courting.  It had rockers on the ends and would rock and sway while the couple sat on each end until they ended up sliding towards the center (as the board is bowed).  It is known as both a courting bench and a joggling board.  It was said that, if you had one of these on your porch, you would never have an unmarried daughter.

The property has a beautiful foot bridge (see photo below) and they gave tours around the property so we could see the wildlife that lived in and around the swamps.  In addition to herons and egrets and quite a few other kinds of birds, we saw a large number of alligators — a few from fairly close up (see photo below).  I was quite glad to be in a jeep, which could hopefully move faster than the alligator.

After our visit to Magnolia Plantation, we returned to Charleston, where we had a couple hours of free time.  Mom and I went to lunch at a place called A.W. Shucks, which is a sea food chain, but had good food.  We had the She Crab Soup and some butterfly shrimp, stuffed with crab and wrapped in bacon.  It was all delicious.  After lunch, we walked around the historic commercial area.  I found a place that had some Civil War artifacts, which was where I bought an intact bullet (to go with the smushed one from Fredericksburg).  I also found a mourning pin, a Union uniform button, the cap from a powder flask, and a couple other small items.  I then bought some sweet grass hot mats that have seen quite a bit of use ever since when having a nice dinner in the dining room.

From Charleston, we traveled on to Beaufort, South Carolina.  The historic district contains several antebellum houses that are still privately owned.  You can walk by them, drive by them, or take a carriage ride by them, but only one house is open to the public.  We weren’t there long enough to allow for a visit.  But I really liked the town.  A fair amount of the film Forrest Gump was filmed there and in Savannah.  The harbor was used as the location of Bubba Gump Shrimp.

Beaufort was also close to Fort Wagner, where the 54^th Massachusetts was slaughtered as portrayed in the film Glory.  The survivors were taken to Beaufort after that battle in order to recuperate.  Those who died at Fort Wagner and were dumped into the mass grave there, were disinterred and reburied in Beaufort National Cemetery after the war ended.  Whenever I feel the need for a good cry, I put that movie on.  The entire last half hour (once the 54^th begins its march to Fort Wagner) brings me to strongly flowing tears every time (it’s disgusting really — I just blubber).

We had lunch in Hilton Head, South Carolina and continued on to Savannah, Georgia.  We were staying in a hotel just a block from Factors’ Walk.  This had been the main export area for cotton as well as the main import area for slaves.  Several antique shops, restaurants, pubs, and galleries are now in the buildings original used for the buying and selling of both cotton and slaves.  Out on the harbor side of the buildings, the replica of “The Bounty” that had been used in the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando, was just arriving.  It was to be docked in Savannah for a few days.  The ship ended up sinking in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy.

That evening, we went to dinner at The Pirates’ House.  The building was originally built in 1734, making it the oldest in Georgia.  A tavern was established there in 1753.  They have several copies of the book “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson and claim that Captain Flint died in a room upstairs.  Although the book does say that Captain Flint died in Savannah, he was a totally fictional character, so they are just pulling your leg.

Emma Kelly, who features in the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” (and the movie version too), was playing piano upstairs on the night we were there, so we all went up to see her.  She was playing “Moon River”.

The food was really good.  I had the Pecan Fried Chicken (a specialty) with Bourbon Pecan Pie for dessert.

After dinner, we embarked on a nighttime “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” plus “Haunted Savannah” tour.  The book had come out in 1994 and the film in 1997.  Our visit was in 1999, so the film was still fresh on everyone’s minds.  Both the book and film locations were pointed out to us as well as the most haunted locations in the city — and there are a lot of them.  I enjoy ghost tours.  I like hearing the stories behind the hauntings.

The next day, we took a walking tour, which started at Factors’ Walk and continued along Bull Street into the part of town with all of the squares and mansions.  The church from the opening of Forrest Gump was along the way.  This was where the feather was floating around prior to landing near Forrest at the bus stop.  The bus stop had also been located in Savannah at Chippewa Square (it was just there for the movie).

There are times when Mom and I have enough of the “museum shuffle” on a walking tour and depart from it to do our own thing as long as we know where we are and how to get back to wherever we need to be after the tour.  In this case, we had a lot we wanted to see in a short period of time, felt we could cover ground faster on our own, knew exactly where we were and were still in walking distance to the hotel.  So we deserted the tour at Mercer House (after telling the guide, so they wouldn’t worry).

Mercer House wasn’t open to the public at that time.  For those not familiar with “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, this was where millionaire antiques dealer Jim Williams had lived.  It was also where the shooting that killed his assistant, Danny Hansford, took place.  Roughly six months after Williams was finally acquitted of killing Hansford (after four trials and nearly a decade), Williams himself died of heart failure in the same room in which Hansford died.  His body was found in nearly the same spot where Hansford’s body had lain.

A short walk from Mercer House is Armstrong House, the home of Williams’ lawyer, Sonny Seiler.  Seiler was also the owner of Uga, the bulldog mascot for the University of Georgia.  Forsythe Park (the one with the beautiful fountain) is a short walk from Armstrong House.

After taking photos of the part and fountain, we back tracked up Bull Street to the Green-Meldrin House.  This was the house used by General Sherman as his headquarters, when he stayed in Savannah for a while after his march to the sea.  Then we stopped for lunch and continued on to the Owen-Thomas House.

This house had been built in 1816 in the Regency style and had remained in the hands of the original family until it became a museum.  It was said that Lafayette gave a speech from the balcony on the side of the house in 1825.  We could tour the entire house.  I love it when I can see an entire property as it gives a pretty clear picture of what life would have been like there.

The Isaiah Davenport House, in the Federal style, was the last house we toured before heading back to the hotel and then dinner at the Exchange Tavern (a former cotton warehouse, built in 1799) on Factor’s Walk.  Davenport’s widow converted the house into a boarding house after his death in 1827.  Over the years, the neighborhood became run down and the house was scheduled for demolition in 1955.  But a group of concerned citizens joined forces, purchased the house, and began restoring it.  It was opened as a museum on 1963 and was the first house to be saved and restored by Savannah’s preservation movement.

Fredericksburg, VA is a fascinating place.  George Washington’s family moved to the area in 1738 (Ferry Farm), when George was a six-year-old child.  He spent most of his childhood there (until his early twenties) and his mother moved into the town itself in her later years.  One of Washington’s closest friends, Hugh Mercer, owned an apothecary in Fredericksburg.  We were able to see the apothecary, Washington’s brother’s tavern (The Rising Sun), Washington’s sister Betty’s plantation (Kenmore), his mother’s home and his mother’s grave.  Both John Paul Jones and James Monroe also lived in Fredericksburg at some point in their lives.

Ferry Farm was the setting for the “cherry tree incident” — when little George was asked about what happened to a cherry tree on the property and answered with all honesty that he had chopped it down with his hatchet.  Not sure if this really happened or if it is simply a legend.  But the point of the story was to illustrate Washington’s character.

At the time of the Civil War, four battles were fought in and around the town — Fredericksburg, Chancelorsville, Spotsylvania Court House, and Wilderness.  The battle that we concentrated on for this visit was the Battle of Fredericksburg, which took place in December of 1862.  The Union, led by General Ambrose Burnside, crossed the Rappahannock River using pontoons, and raced across a field from the river to an area called Marye’s Heights, where the Confederates, led by General Robert E. Lee, were waiting for them behind a stone wall on the Sunken Road and up above on Marye’s Heights.  The Union forces were essentially slaughtered with over 12,000 casualties.

We were able to walk along the Sunken Road and climb up to the Marye’s Heights area above.  I managed to get a bullet from the Civil War era that had apparently hit something (or someone) as it was somewhat smushed from impact.  There were so many bullets flying during the battles in the area that people still find them in the dirt of the battlefields from time to time.  The bullet I got was one of those.  It sits next to an intact bullet acquired in Charleston on the mantel of the fireplace in my family room — two small pieces of US history.  The historic part of town is very well preserved (both Colonial and Civil War sites), so it feels like you are stepping back in time.  I would definitely like to return and spend more time there.

Our next stop was Colonial Williamsburg, which was founded under the name of Middle Plantation in 1632.  After Jamestown burned down, Williamsburg served as capital of the Colony of Virginia from 1699 to 1780.  In the 1930s, John D. Rockefeller and Reverend Goodwin of Williamsburg, began buying and restoring or rebuilding the homes and other buildings that had been part of Colonial Williamsburg.  The Capitol Building included the House of Burgesses, which was the first assembly of elected representatives in the colonies.  Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and several members of the Lee and Randolph families served in the House of Burgesses.  We spent a fair amount of the limited time we had on this trip in this building before having lunch at the King’s Arms Tavern, watching some Revolutionary War soldiers drill, checking out an Army camp, and making a brief visit to the Governor’s Palace.  Fortunately that later trip that took me back to Philadelphia and Washington, DC also brought me back to Williamsburg with much more time to explore.  This trip just scratched the surface.

It was fun watching and listening to the interpreters and actors.  I have sometimes thought that relocating to one of those historic places like Williamsburg or Plimoth Plantation after retirement and getting a job as an interpreter or acting the part of someone historic might be fun.

After all the history of NYC, Philadelphia, DC, Fredericksburg and Williamsburg, we headed for Myrtle Beach.  No history there.  Just tropical weather, beaches, shopping and the Dixie Stampede.

It used to be that the tour directors of every tour I ever went on were convinced that all women on their tour wanted to spend their time on the tour shopping.  They would even crack jokes about the women spending their man’s money.  I have to say that Mom and I always found that a bit disgusting.  We were on the trip to experience the history, art, architecture, culture, etc. of the place, not to shop.  We could do that at home.  Besides, long gone were the days when the “little woman” stayed home while the man was the sole bread winner.  We were spending our own money, thank you very much.

Most of the time, when the tour coach dropped everyone off for some shopping, there were other things in the vicinity — something historic or picturesque or an old church or someplace to have some ice cream and people watch or someplace interesting to take a walk.  But in Myrtle Beach, we were taken to a shopping complex called Barefoot Landing.  This was in the middle of nowhere with nothing else around it.  All of the shopping was pretty standard fare that we could get back home — nothing historic.  So we wandered around from shop to shop, quite bored, until we finally gave up and went outside to hang out in the fresh air before getting back on the coach.  This expedition was followed by a boat ride on the intra-coastal waterway.  Much better.  We both always liked taking boats rides on the water.  I still do.

The hotel was right on the ocean with an ocean view from our room (see photo below).  We were on the 14^th floor and had a balcony.  We opted for a nice walk along the beach, looking for interesting sea shells before dinner.

Dinner was at the Dixie Stampede.  The food was American country picnic kind of food — fried chicken, ribs, corn on the cob, cornbread, and coleslaw.  While eating, we were entertained by some trick horseback riding and patriotic displays.  There weren’t many Americans in our tour group other than us.  Most of the group was British or Australian.  The patriotic bits were quite over-the-top.  Then there was a big competition between the North and the South where the audience was divided depending upon where you were sitting.  This was followed by an ostrich race.

From Myrtle Beach, we dove deeper into the South — visiting plantations, Charleston, Beaufort and Savannah.  More about them next time.