Weddings, Moon Pies and Thunderbirds

My Wedding :)

I just saw in a travel program on the television that in Britain the trains may be the most expensive per mile in Europe but they are also fast, frequent, the most comfortable and the most RELIABLE! What?!?!?! Clearly the host has not been privy to living in Edenbridge, missing his train by a minute and having to wait an hour for the next one which has been delayed due to leaves on the line, oh yes and having to pay an absurd amount for the privilege! Something I don't miss about home is the railways! no public transport is possibly better than that expensive and inadequate piece of....

Some other 'facts' I have enjoyed hearing on the tele about England is that 'hard up' means cheap and in a show called American Pickers (a little like the antique roadshow) they once visited a town "190 miles from London" Well.... 190 miles from London means you could be anywhere from France, Belgium and Holland to Bristol or Birmingham or Portsmouth! ha! I have no idea which town they visited!

This is a Rhino in the city of Southampton, they had erected 40 of them around the city and I went down there aiming to photograph them all (and watch a football game!) However due to a major cock up on the railways delaying me around 3 hours I only had time to find a handful of the 40 rhinos I was hoping to find :(

Well Good Evening world! This blog comes to you from the fingers of a husband, I am now a newly married man, yikes! First of all I suppose I should admit to being a complete and utter moron - in my last post I misspelled dEEr as dear! duh! it must be the American influence! just kidding :) I really wish I did not have to write a blog on the wedding as I really wanted all you folks from back home to be able to attend but as the 5 orangutans can testify the wedding was absolutely marvelous and I think a brilliant time was had by all. even if I did end up with cake on my face, quite literally :) A post about the wedding shall follow soon but as I only have 5 blurry pictures available to me right now it is going to have to wait! Do not fear however, as I still have lots of cool things to talk about from our amazing honeymoon in Savannah GA and Charleston SC

Quick quiz question mainly for the UK folk: what does GA and SC stand for?

if you guessed Georgia and South Carolina you would be correct :)

Our Hotel.

Savannah was our first stop and it has a warm temperate climate which means that it has seriously hot summers and also warm winter weather with stable highs in the 20s, a little like Greece in that regards, it is also prone to rather awesome thunderstorms and hurricanes and unfortunately for us the thunderstorms decided to stay away but fortunately the hurricanes did as well! Well I am pleased that me and Amanda did not decide to stay away as we had such a fantastic time! It can be really hard to find independent places to stay in America and so we were very happy when we discovered the Thunderbird Inn... located on the edge of downtown the Thunderbird inn is just full of retro charm from its red, orange and blue colour scheme to its awesome sign to the fact that when you enter your room you are greeted by 2 lovely Moon Pies on your pillows :) What are Moon Pies you may be thinking? well they are very similar to a wagon wheel except in true American tradition they are about twice the size and come in about a million and twenty flavours! yum! they definitely seem to be the candy of choice in the Southern states as you see them everywhere but unfortunately I am yet to see one in Ohio :(

Me and Amanda surrounded by Sunshine and Spanish moss.

Something that really helps to make Savannah unique is a plant called Spanish moss. Unlike it's name suggests this is not to be found in Spain but in very small areas of the Americas principally in Northern Chile and Argentina, through the tropics into Mexico and Honduras but mainly it can be found in Savannah. This stuff is everywhere! It hangs off of all the trees but seems to prefer large majestic oak trees and gives the whole town a really spooky (and Romantic!) feel. It is really lovely strolling through the tree lined avenues being shaded from the sun by the strands of moss hanging down.

Savannah is famous for it's historical city centre, an area consisting of 24 squares all stuffed full of Spanish moss, statues, fountains and surrounded by stunning colonial style houses dating from the last 400 years (very old for the USA!) the houses tend to have 3 floors - one for the slaves and 2 for the family, one of the houses we visited had up to 13 slaves at one point in it's history. We spent our first day strolling around visiting all 24 of these lovely squares and it really felt like stepping back in time, I have never been to a city that has been so well preserved without a single 60s tower block in sight! America may lack the history of Europe but the history it does have it certainly seems to do a brilliant job of preserving. My pictures don't really do the city justice, I found it so hard to photograph as the sun was so bright and the shadows so dark I couldn't figure out the contrast!!! very frustrating!!!

If any picture epitomizes life in Savannah, I think this must be it :)

Something else that America can do like no one else is food, as dinner in the Mellow Mushroom can testify.... pints of beer for $2 followed by a 'small' pizza for $10... the pints in America may be a little smaller than back home but the pizza certainly isn't! I am disappointed to announce that after 3 attempts at eating in Mellow mushroom (they also had a restaurant in Charleston) I failed to even once finish my pizza :( I think that even my friend Oz of the fish finger challenge fame would struggle with one of them!

For anyone who has read 'in the garden of good and evil' this is Jim Williams house. For anyone who has not read 'in the garden in the garden of the good and evil' I thoroughly recommend it!

A television program that Amanda and myself both enjoy watching is... ehm.... 'Ghost Adventures' where a team of paranormal investigators travel around some of the most haunted locations getting locked inside them from dusk until dawn scaring the living daylights out of each other and providing endless laughs during the process. As Savannah has a history of being one of the most haunted cities in the USA they have of course visited the city and so both Amanda and me were excited for our 'ghost day'! This involved a trip to Bonaventure cemetery in the daytime, followed by dinner in the moon river brewery (as visited by the ghost adventures crew) and a ghost tour in the evening. It was definitely my favourite day of our honeymoon, the cemetery was absolutely stunning, it covered a huge area, surrounded by steaming swamps and was home to a copious amount of sand flies and dead bodies, here are some pictures for you to enjoy :)

The Mercer family plot of Johnny Mercer fame.

A creepy angel with some Spanish Moss behind.

Our trip to the cemetery was followed by an unfortunately uneventful trip to the brewery - no matter how much beer I drank no ghosts seemed to be in the building that night :( The same could be said for our ghost tour, having happily taken quite a substantial amount of our money, the tour proceeded to take us to a 'paranormal location' this paranormal location turned out to be the tour companies own warehouse where they keep the trolleys at night and was apparently the location of a gruesome triple murder at the turn of the century..... hmmmmm.... I am thinking of entering the paranormal profession myself ;)

Me and Amanda at the Owens - Thomas house.

So I think I have written enough on Savannah for the time being.... But please stay tune as next up shall be honeymoon part 2: Charleston, South Carolina :)

in other news, after a lot of thought I have decided my future may lie in politics and have applied to be mayor of Toronto! I shall keep you informed on that one :)

The weather has been doing some crazy things here, I have only been in Ohio a little over a month and during this time I have experienced heat of 35 degrees, snow and -7 temperatures and currently there is a tornado warning issued for the area! ridiculous! but here is a lovely picture of the scene that greeted us on our return from honeymoon.