A Trip to Tybee Part 2
31 March 2003-10:51 a.m.
I meant to finish that entry about Tybee sooner. Sorry about that. I left off with our trip to the lighthouse. We decided to be extremely touristy and go up the lighthouse. It has 178 stairs. That's a lot. We didn't really think about that when we bought our little wristbands.
We discovered that when you stood in front of the lighthouse, and looked up it looked like it was about to fall on you. This extremely interesting visual effect was caused by the clouds. At least that was what we decided.
Climbing up was a little tiring. I have a special place in my heart for the two teenage boys who ran all the way up and then came thundering back down the very small curling steps, nearly knocking us over. "Yes goody for you, you are in much better shape than I am. Oh to be there the day your knees blow out."
We stood around looking out at the view, talking about...Brent and Derek Eat Noodles. I'm not sure how that topic came up, I think it was because Alyssa was asking about it. I think that she had seen the poster, and wanted to know what it was about. (for those readers not familiar with Brent and Derek, just know that this was an original play by Brent and Derek, staring Brent and Derek and yes they did indeed eat noodles on stage, it was quite funny) Anyway the view enjoyed, we set off down the steps.
Going down turns out to be much scarier than going up. We felt fine as we walked around the lighthouse keeper's house. It was only when we stopped walking that we noticed our legs. See we had stopped out movement but our legs hadn't. That mile or so walk on the beach coupled with the climb up the lighthouse had taken it's toll. Our legs were shaking. They were decided unhappy with us. So what did we do? We went and had lunch.
We drove into Savannah and stopped at a seafood restaurant we had seen on the way to the island. It was yummy. We almost ended up with a guest. This restaurant had giant windows all the way around and outside lived a colony of the cutest cats you have ever seen. We know that they're feral and might not take to having a human grab them up and take them home but oh did we want to. Lunch consisted of snatches of conversation interrupted with "oh look at that one, aaa it's all black, oh it's so cute" We were by far the restaurant patrons most squeeish over the kitties.
Full and happy we headed down to River Street because we hadn't walked enough. We parked on a side street near one of thesquares and proceeded, to walk through every one of the 21 squares. It was beautiful. The sun had come out, it was warm. The next weekend was St.Patrick's Day and they had had The Greening of the Fountains, so we had lots of fun looking at green flowing fountains.
On River Street we kept noticing these people who had packs with them and animals and who were not the cleanest people. We couldn't figure out if they were just homeless or if they backpacking around. It began to drive us crazy. I'm not sure why we cared so much, it really didn't matter, but we were fascinated. It came to a point where I thought Alyssa might actually go up and ask one of them. Oh and palm fronds. They were everywhere. It looked like the aftermath of a Palm Sunday celebration. We had no idea where they came from.
We walked the day away, stopping every once in a while to eat, or watch a street performer or merely to sit and reflect upon how lucky we were. To be in such a wonderful city on a beautiful day with nothing pressing to worry about is truly a fantastic thing. At the end of the day we sat our weary selves down in The Cathedral of St John the Baptist for Mass. It's a beautiful building. I never thought that I would ever hear a organist play music quite as slow as at my church, but now I have. For Alyssa and myself this was a bit of a shock. Her home church has a band that plays, and both of us have gotten used to the Catholic Center, which is much livelier than this one, not that that says much. But it was a pretty building, and it was nice to sit down. Oh was it nice to sit down.
After Mass we walked back to the car, and headed back to the B&B. We stopped at a McDonald’s to pick up dinner. Yes we were that tired. We grabbed a couple of bottles of wine from a Publix. We got back, filled up that tub, and sat in it. Drinking wine, reading books and calling people from the tub because we could. Just to brag. "guess where I am?" Finally when our legs stopped cursing us, we got out. The rest of the evening was spent laying about watching Young Frankenstein. We fell asleep at a ridiculously early hour