styri: Savannah

Dear Beloved Friends and Family,

I regret to inform you that I'm never coming back from Savannah.
I've discovered an intense addiction to Southern-Style crack, better known as collard greens.

We've had an amazing day, but before I delve into that, I promised a better recount of last night...

Before we even got to Savannah, we stopped at the most ...um... preciously quaint little gas station I've ever seen. They still had the old-style pumps, where each pump was one sort of gasoline and all the numbers just kind of spun around on casino-style rollers. I was astounded. A gas pump that doesn't take a credit card?! The south is bewildering.

Once we got in, we found our hotel with little difficulty. We're right on the river, smack-dab in the middle of Savannah's historic district.
The hotel was, as I said earlier, overbooked, requiring us to stay in a hospitality room. I'm not going to lie: it was awesome.
Maybe I didn't get to sleep in a bed, but I could watch CNN while peeing! (There was a small flat-screen TV in the bathroom.) It's the simple things, you know?

We set out right after check-in, deciding that since it was about 10:30ish and we'd been driving all day, we deserved some grub and a beverage.

We successfully located the latter directly across the street at a little English-style pub. The bartender there was a small, portable library of Savannah-related information, including the best places to get food and drinks. He seemed more in-the-know about nightlife for the 35+ crowd, but he managed to direct us to Mercury Lounge, an interesting-looking bar with the most mentally incapacitated doorman I've ever encountered. He tried to turn us away on account of Joey being less than two years old.
Yes, I said two. Less than two.
(The guy had, apparently, looked at the "issue" date on his license instead of the "date of birth.")

After settling in to some comfortable animal-print bar stools, Joey took off to play some assorted songs on the juke box and I chatted up the bartender, finding out his take on the food and drink scene.
This guy seemed a little more in tune with the college nighttime hot spots, and he confirmed bartender #1's food recommendations.

We finished our drinks and headed back to our enormous, bed-less, spectacular room-with-a-view.

This morning I woke up to the sun shining across the river.
From the window, I could see a happy-looking tug boat tootin' and groovin' with a flock of seagulls (the birds, not the early 80's pop group) flying around it.
Not an entirely bad way to wake up.

We got dressed quickly-ish, changing rooms into one that had proper pillows and such, and then decided to set out for the BBQ smokehouse that had been recommended by both bartenders.

Sweet Leaf Smokery is a "crap-almost-missed-it" sort of establishment.
It's stuck in the middle of a series of buildings where nothing is going on and the entire restaurant only has about 20 tables--if that.

Joey and I started off with most interesting Georgia beer they had available: Sweet Water Blue. Our waitress didn't tell us anything about the beer, aside from the fact that it was not a dark beer.

It was blueberry beer! Oh sweet surprises!
I've submitted a formal request to fill the entire back seat with bottles of this deliciousness before leaving Georgia.

Um...the food.
Oh, oh, oh, the food.
(Grandpa, cover your eyes.)

It was foodgasmic.
That's the only way I can even begin to describe it.

(Okay, Papa, you can read again.)

Joey got some pulled pork, with smokey baked beans and Granny Smith apple coleslaw on the side. I had the chipped BBQ beef with some collard greens and the Granny Smith coleslaw.
And thus, we're never coming back.
It's inevitable: we're going to be sitting back in Indiana craving this stuff within two weeks. We're going to be miserable, knowing nowhere within 17 hours can compare.
The meat literally dissolved in my mouth. It came topped with a light, sweet BBQ sauce that complimented the woodsy, smoked flavor of the meat.
I could go into painful details here, but I'm probably going to read through this when I get back...and I'm not that much of a masochist.

We hit the streets, spending some quality time in the several lovely, flower-strewn parks downtown, ducking around some shops. We stopped for ice cream at the Savannah Candy Kitchen, home of Tubby's ice cream. With a name like that, you have to expect it's worth eating until you're roughly the size of a freight liner...and it was.

We're setting out now for dinner and a movie.

x's and o's!