Savannah, part 2: Paula Deen and Tombstones

In Savannah, you can eat some delicious seafood or country cookin' that will make you want to slap ya mama.  One place to experience some good eating is Paula Deen's The Lady and Sons.  It's a really popular place with both locals and tourists, who want a little taste of the delicious-looking stuff Paula cooks up on the Food Network. 

  If you want to eat here, you have to plan ahead.  The hostess stands at the door and starts taking lunch and dinner reservations at 9:30, and there will be a line.  They will tell you what time to come back to eat.  Lunch starts at 11:00, and luckily we were ahead in the line so we got in at 11:45 on the day we went.  When your time comes, you come back and wait across the street, and then they call you over.

Beside the restaurant, Paula Deen has a store where you can buy gifts and kitchen gadgets.  Also, the cookbooks in her store are autographed (and it's a real autograph, not just a stamp).  I bought the Lady and Sons set, and I've cooked quite a few things from it.  It's just variations on country cooking, which is pretty much all we eat anyway in my family.

The food is buffet, and basically if you can dream it up, it's on the buffet.  Several meats will be out along with every side dish your grandma ever made for Thanksgiving dinner.  And it's all good.  But I have to say, it wasn't as much of a novelty to me as it seemed to be to some of the people around us who apparently don't eat much country cooking!

Guess what.  I went to the bathroom after eating and was waiting for a stall.  When the person came out, it was....

Jelly Roll, Paula's most famous cook at the restaurant.

I didn't think it was really a great time to talk to her or ask for an autograph or anything, since we were taking turns in bathroom stalls.  I feel sure she appreciated that. 

The Lady and Son's isn't the only good place to eat in Savannah, but it's one of the most well-known.  Now that I'm done talking about food, I'm moving on to one of my next favorite things to do in old towns....

visit old graveyards.

I know.  It creeps some people out, but I just find them to be really peaceful, and I like to think about who these people might have been and what their lives must have been like. 

One of the most beautiful ones in Savannah is Bonaventure.  It's not exactly in Savannh, and I can't exactly tell you where it is because I'm horrible with directions.  But anyway... it's a lovely, lovely place.  It's full of statues that look like they belong more in a museum than on graves, and the big ancient trees are so shady with the Spanish moss dripping from them.

It's not like a little church cemetary, or the ones where there is just an open field with flowers in vases sticking up out of the ground every few feet.  It's more like a restful garden.  The statues are really haunting.

Johnny Mercer, the composer of the song Moon River, is buried here.  On the day we visited, someone had thrown some flowers on his stone.  It's hard to see, but part of the inscription says, "And the angels sing." 

This was the most interesting headstone to me.  It's in the shape of a bench, and near the edge of the water.  This man loved to come out to the cemetary and watch the boats go by.  He very literally invites people to sit down, take a rest in the shade of the trees, and gaze out over the water.

Part of the inscription says, "Give my love to the world."  What a lovely thought, and what a fascinating person he must have been to have put this much forethought into his final resting place.

These statues really are haunting and beautiful at the same time.  If you ever make it to Bonaventure Cemetary, maybe you'll understand my fascination with old cemetaries.

.....Or maybe not.  :-)