Savannah Day 1 Part 1

Continued from Charleston Day 3 Part 2.

This morning we will pack up everything, get into a rental car and drive to Charleston. One of the best decision that I’ve made so far on this trip was to take a bus into Charleston instead of renting a car from day one and just leaving it parked and costing us money. Instead, I will be picking up a rental car today from a lot within walking distance of our hotel and returning it at the Savannah airport on the day that we fly back to Austin.

It’s raining today. We’ve lucked out with the weather so far, can’t complain about a little rain today.

Come on, eat your bread so you won’t be hungry and fussy later.

My breakfast, except I couldn’t eat it sitting down since I had CL strapped in her carrier on my chest.

It takes a whole village to raise PL.

How nice, leisurely reading the morning paper. It’s a good gig being a grandparent.

Found her toes.

So, while everyone else packed, I made a short walk to Avis car rental, which was just a few blocks away from hotel. I had tried to call Avis, but the number provided would only connect me to Budget(also owned by Avis). Budget couldn’t pull up my confirmation number to see whether they did indeed have a car seat that I had requested. When I asked Budget for the number to Avis, they gave me a national number, which was useless. Then I asked for the local Avis number, which they gave me the listed number for Avis, which…was the same number that I just called that led to Budget agent…WTF. I feel like I am in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Finally, I said fuck it and just decided to walk to the car rental lot and talk to someone in person to get it sorted.

This is what I saw when I walked over to the Avis/Budget car lot office. This is it, just one small desk. So, did I talk to the one person here who only works for Budget accounts and was too lazy to get his coworker to input Avis info, or did my phone call lead to some other local call center? Ugh, either way, this is stupid. There was no one at the desk, so I waited and waited until finally I just walked to the back lot, where I found the two employees moving the 10 cars around that they had on the lot. Fortunately, they did have the car seat for PL that I had requested, and soon I was on my way with a van.

Here’s our ride in all of her glory. When we had traveled with my in laws to SF/Napa, we also had a dodge van, but in white. I had nicknamed that van the white whale, ie. moby dick. Of course, I just called it The Dick for short. If that white van was The Dick, then I guess that would make this van The Bla….hahaha.

All packed up and on the way out of Charleston. But before we head out, gonna make a pit stop for coffee at a shop recommended to us by the barista at my regular Austin coffee shop.

We drove a few blocks to this warehouse between two highways where the coffee shop is located. Cool, there’s a distillery here, I wonder if there’s any small bottles that we can buy for carry on luggage.

Unfortunately, they don’t sell anything that are small enough to be in carry on luggage.

The Daily coffee shop. It looks to be a lot hipper and fancier than we had expected.

Interesting to have such a fancy shop with lots of customers in a seemingly neglected, ugly, and kind of run down part of town between two highways.

Cool dress.

I will say, the coffee here is pretty damn good.

OK, now that we all got some caffeine, time to hit the road again.

Our coffee pit stop took much longer than expected since it took them a little bit of time to make our breakfast. But again, it’s pretty damn good. I worry because there’s only so much time we can keep the kids strapped to their car seats until they start to lose it…though, oddly enough, I think they both kind of miss their car seats. I think they enjoy the familiarity of being in a car seat since they’ve been traveling around out of their routine.

That Holiday Inn looks similar to the one in downtown Austin by the river.

The setup in the back of the van. Video to keep PL occupied….sometimes. CL is mostly happy just chilling.

The area outside of Charleston becomes very plain vanilla really fast.

We got a tortilla for PL to snack on, half of which ended up inside grandma’s shoes. Haha.

No, I can attest kids aren’t priceless. They are very, very expensive.

Grandpa feeding CL a bottle.

Odd to see just one whole area logged away.

The trees on the left side are all equal in height, but all equally shorter than the trees on the right side. I wonder if there was a fire, or if its just managed logging?

It’s been almost two hours in the car, since the coffee stop took us an extra 25 minutes. We had planned on stopping at this McDonald’s for a restroom break and snack break about 30 minutes ago when we looked for a place to stop on our phone. As luck would have it, literally about 30 seconds right before us reaching the McDonald’s both girls start losing it big time, while they had been pretty calm for much of the ride before!! Perfect timing for picking a place to stop.

Still losing it after I took her out of the car. Wanted to sit down and didn’t want to get up…

Mama will carry you then I guess.

Awww, isn’t that cute, a happy meal super small french fry container!

Happy…ate some milk, then pooped! Great timing again!

Eating an apple slice, but must put it in the french fry container. We discovered that McNuggets with the fried batter peeled off makes for a delicious lunch for PL as she will actually eat them(she can be picky about foods, like most toddlers). Will keep that in mind for future road trips.

Saw this in a parking spot right outside to the entrance of McDonald’s on my way out. Someone had a party in the parking lot here…

I had sort of expected this, but was still surprised to see it to be true. The car seat that we rented from the Avis is absolutely disgusting. Stains of all sorts(poop as well), all over the cover. It looks like it’s been in use for years and never been washed…ugh. I almost wanted to lug around PL’s convertible car seat back from Austin just so we wouldn’t have to use this disgusting thing. Someone is getting a bath when we get to the hotel…

Back on the road, nothing much to see.

Another 40 min in the car, and we are approaching Savannah, which is just right over that bridge up ahead.

Savannah.

Drove by the projects getting into historical downtown Savannah. I’ve been told that historic Savannah is really nice, but the rest of Savannah has high crime rate etc. etc.

When we arrived, only one room was ready for check in. We also received the bad news that they didn’t have any side by side rooms where we could open the door connecting the two rooms together. I guess we’ll have to rough it and try to put both girls to nap in the same room…

Valet parking was $22 a day, but self park was $12. I’ll take the $12 considering the garage is just a block away.

Took this photo so I would remember what floor I parked on when I came back to find the car two days from now.

Time to move all of our stuff into the room and then we’ll go explore Savannah a little. PL got jealous of her sister being in the carrier all the time and decided she needed a turn in it.

This is what $234 a night gets you right smack in the middle of the Historic District of Savannah. Hotels in Charleston and Savannah have not been cheap.

ADA rooms must get no love, because they always give these to me since I book the rooms at the cheapest rates online.

Bundled up and ready to head out. It’s a little breezy outside today. Such a cute bear.

Walking to the river front right by our hotel.

The City Hall with the gold dome.

On this trip, she’s learned to eat straight from a whole apple.

Spanish moss everywhere.

Why is there so much Spanish moss here, but almost none in Charleston that I’ve seen? The two cities are both on the coast and not that far away from each other…