Savannah, GA: Part 2

After a breakfast of savory grits and coffee at the Bed and Breakfast, Ryan and I headed out for our second day of exploring! We started out for the Foxy Loxy Cafe, but stopped at the gorgeous Forsyth Park on the way. 

I found one of my most favorite street stickers ever down below. A man in a pom-pom hat with a technicolor beard. Love it! 

This coffee shop was packed! And rightly so. It was too dark inside to get great photos, but the atmosphere was chill. If I lived in Savannah or did an extended stay, I would definitely bring work here to do! The walls were decorated with art, my favorite being plates with animal torsos dressed in old fashioned clothing. I ordered an horchata latte, the specialty of the Fox Cafes.

Later in the day, we took a tour of the Thomas-Owens House as part of the three building museum tour package. Ryan and I were the only two people who showed up for the time slot, so the tour was very personal! The Thomas-Owens House was one of the first in the country to devise a system of indoor plumping! 

After, we checked out the other two museums, the Telfair Academy and the Jepson Center.

Another awesome sticker find:

For dinner, we went to a restaurant called Jazz'd Tapas Bar. We went all out since it was our last night in town. We ordered mojitos, three Americanized tapas (including bruschetta, but I don't recall the names of the others, though they were delicious), and a bread pudding for dessert. Bread pudding is totally not for me, but Ryan enjoyed it! There was a local artist playing live music and our waitress was really friendly. I would definitely go back if we're ever in the area again!

The following morning, we enjoyed pancakes at the Bed and Breakfast and then relaxed in our room until checkout. Once on the streets again, we crossed off the last of the historic squares on the map and went back to River Street to pick up souvenirs. Then, we picked up drinks at  Savannah Coffee Roasters and sat in one of the squares, drinking in the atmosphere. A man was singing some soul music nearby, making the mood very enjoyable. 

Eventually 4:00pm rolled around and we headed for the Greyhound station. I was hoping for a quiet ride home, but we had a lot of bumps along the way. We almost missed our transfer in Atlanta and then we got stuck in Nashville, Tennessee because none of the new drivers showed up!?! We were stuck with about 200 other people at the station for 3.5 hours between 1:00-4:30am. Not a pleasant experience. We were so tired by the time we transferred again in Chicago. When we finally reached Milwaukee, we went straight to bed. This is the biggest factor to my deciding to never travel by bus again. Too much can go wrong otherwise, especially in winter! That being said, here are three more travel tips I'm going to remember for future trips:
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1. Be mindful of checkout time. This falls in line with my previous tip to be mindful of check-in time. I wanted to maximize our time in the city, so I picked a later bus that didn't depart until 6 hours after our checkout. Once again we had to carry around our luggage, which for me was  heavier because I took home some souvenirs.

2. Estimate how much your trip is going to cost, then multiply it by 1.75. This is especially true if you don't have a lot of money budgeted to begin with. This will take care of miscellaneous expenses that will more than likely come up. And, if it turns out you don't need it, it's more money in your pocket. However, I ended up putting a lot of expenses on my credit card because I did not anticipate them ahead of time. 

3. Pack your suitcase, then cut the amount in half. I definitely over-packed for this trip. I was planning on it being warmer than it turned out to be, so I didn't even wear half of my wardrobe. I ended up wearing the same pair of jeans everyday and rotating tops. It totally worked out! In the future I will hopefully remember this experience and pack less to begin with. I was especially reminded with how I over-packed when we were in our last hours there carrying our luggage around. It was even heavier than the first day and I knew I hadn't worn half the stuff I packed (including my red boots, which made my feet so sore on day 1 I didn't wear them the rest of the trip). Another, subsequent mini-tip is to pack practical shoes.