3/15/2020

Weekly Update 3/15/2020

I had a visitor this week. Caroline Cuff, daughter of friends from my past life, decided she’d like to go someplace warm for her college spring break. I don’t know if she doesn’t have any friends, or what, but she asked if she could come to Savannah. Well, ok. Luckily I had just entertained Jack and Sarah, so I had an inkling of what young people do. But lets face it, Allen is probably the youngest visitor I have, and whatever I do with him seems to be ok, because he comes back again and again. But college kids? I haven’t a clue.

So I planned the usual: historic places and sites. We took a tour of Bonaventure cemetery with my friend, Don. I thought is was grand and I think Caroline thought it was ok. We went to the SCAD Story because she asked many questions about local colleges and universities. She couldn’t quite understand where SCAD “is”, and to try to explain that the city is it’s campus is confusing. So we did that. We took the water taxi, because that’s one of my favorite things to do, and as we were walking along the river after the boat ride, we saw a dolphin in the river. That doesn’t happen often! We took an evening ghost trolley tour, too, and she later told me that was her favorite thing that she did when she was here.

Wednesday, we drove to Jekyll Island. We took the tram tour around the historic area and went into two of the “cottages”. We went to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center and visited the hospital where we learned a little about some of the turtles being cared for (most are Kemp’s Ridleys and Green, only one Loggerhead; I was disappointed – well, not really, if they’re all healthy and don’t need special care). And we went to driftwood beach. Caroline had hoped to go swimming, but it was too cold. It’s way too early in the season for me to even think about struggling to get into a swim suit, so she would have been on her own. We walked along the beach and picked up seashells. I was surprised that I could see the huge container ship that capsized last September, and still can’t be removed because of environmental hazards.  

We were back in Savannah on Thursday. She had read about the UGA Marine Center that’s on Skidaway Island, and wanted to know if we could go there. Well, I assured her it would take about 5 seconds to go through the “aquarium” there, but she was able to stretch it into almost 2 hours. When we got downtown, I made her walk through Forsyth Park to see the green fountain, and then we went to Massie Heritage Center. She enjoyed the native American exhibit that is there. We also went to the Cathedral because it’s lovely and I hoped she would like to see the inside of that. We had reservations for Tea With Mrs Davenport in the late afternoon, so we did that. We arrived too early, so I could take her through the house, just like I was a regular tour guide or something. The tea was interesting, and I think she liked it. And following that, we took the Savannah for Morons trolley tour. I think that’s the best tour in Savannah, but I know she liked the ghost trolley better. For our last evening, we had chocolate martinis at Lulu’s – that was a great treat!

Her airplane back home was Friday morning, so I dropped her at the airport and went to do my normal Friday routine – DH and The 90. Kay wasn’t able to get to The 90 this week, but I felt bad for my favorite Savannah bartender, Martha, because everything is canceled, and this would be the week end where she would make a LOT of money in tips. I wanted to support her, so I went for one quick Jameson before going home.

The rest of the weekend was pretty boring. Everything is closed. Hotel reservations at most of the hotels were canceled. Museums are closing left and right. The parade was canceled. On St Patrick’s Day weekend, generally you can’t even walk down the street because of the crowds, but it was like a ghost town. There’s also nothing for me to do, because so much is locked up. BC Visitor Center will not be staffed until April, and tours are canceled or postponed. I did go and open up on Saturday and Sunday, but there were so few people, it wasn’t worth my time to stay, and I left. Mostly, I sat home and watched movies on tv and ate. At first, I was skeptical, believing it was the media or the government that was fueling the massive fears. But now that we are all taking precautions, and more and more people are becoming sick, I wonder if this is truly a pandemic. And I wonder how long it will last.

I think it might be like this for a long time. 

So, to ease my boredom a bit, I bought a new tv – a Smart One for the bedroom. Naturally, I couldn’t get it to work, but after online chatting with an associate, I was able to connect to Netflix, Youtube and tv, and I also got my DVD player attached successfully. If I had a microwave in there, I’d never have to get out of bed!

One thing that wasn’t canceled was the Harry O’Donoghue performance at the Tybee Post Theater on Sunday night. He always has such a good show, and it still is almost March 17, in spite of what germs there are out there. They sold Guinness at the snack bar. I was able to keep up on Whiskey in the Jar. The jokes were really funny. Everything about the evening was great.