Easter Sunday: The Saga
March 24, 2008
(From Dulles International Airport)
We're sitting here at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC, waiting for a connection to Savannah, GA. It’s nearly 9PM, We should have been there by now. It’s one of those stories…
We were awake before 5AM, and left home at 5:30, arriving at LAX an easy hour and a half before flight time. Ticketing, short line, little delay. Security, not bad. Boarded the plane, as announced, at around 7:30 for an 8:00AM departure. And sat and waited. Then captain gets on the PA system: the toilets are malfunctioning—almost all of them. He won’t take off with an already overbooked flight and only two toilets for a four and a half hour flight. We’re going to have to wait for new equipment.
Huge sighs all around. Then, two minutes later, an update. The mechanical people think they might have a quick fix, and it won’t be necessary to change planes. Great. Another wait, another announcement: it’s going to take two hours to fix the problem. We can get off the plane at our own risk: if we miss the departure call, they won’t be waiting for us.
We decide to take the risk. It’s abundantly clear by now that we’ll miss our Dulles connection, and we want to be sure we can book a later flight, to get to Savannah by tonight, at least. A somewhat surly greeting at Customer Services, but patience pays off: we’re reserved on a 9:55PM flight out of Dulles.
Back to our plane. We booked our flights months ago, online, and I KNOW I didn’t book these seats. We paid an extra premium for upgradable seats, which these, God knows, are not. They’re the two middle seats in a row of five. When the people in front lean back—as they do, pronto—there’s not even space enough to lower our tables, let alone stand up.
We survive. We arrive at Dulles nearly three hours late, our Savannah flight long since departed. We wait in a long, slow line to confirm our replacement flight and make our way via two shuttle buses to the B Gate area, where we stop for a bite to eat. Then on to the A Gate area, where I now sit, writing.
Ah, the pleasures of air travel! More—inshallah!—from Savannah, in the morning. Wish us luck!
And, yes, from Savannah, in the morning...
We did catch that flight. A small aircraft, a bumpy ride. A hard landing. It's now past midnight. A long, long wait for the baggage. A long, long wait for a late night taxi. The driver gets lost three times on his way to our B & B. He says it's been a long day. I couldn't agree more.
We reached our final destination a little after one. In bed by two...
It's now half-past eight in the morning. Ellie is still sleeping. I sit typing by the window to a courtyard. The blinds are closed, but last night, in the dark, it looked quite beautiful. Southern, as I imagine Southern to look, all balconies, shrubbery and fountains. I can hear the one in the courtyard splashing now.
I'm looking forward to a cup of coffee soon... More later. Meantime, forgive the jeremiad! It's just the air travel that makes me grumpy.
A sneak preview, from our B&B room:
Savannah
March 25, 2008
We woke at nine to the sound of the fountain splashing gently in the courtyard down below, relieved--I speak for myself, of course--to be on terra firma and of moderately sane mind. It's cold here in Georgia. We found ourselves shivering a bit over breakfast in the pleasant room off the courtyard. Grits available, but left untasted. What are they, anyway? I preferred the look of the salsa casserole.
A brief jaunt out to the nearest square--we were to discover that there are many here in Savannah, each with its own beauty.
It's the season for azaleas, and they are everywhere, in full bloom.
And yes, the trees--predominantly live oak--do drip with Spanish moss.
We decided on a tram tour, to get oriented in the city, and spent a couple of hours in the company of a bus-load of tourists, like ourselves, and a good-humor lady driver brimming with knowledge of the local history and architecture and lore. Savannah is a truly beautiful city where rows of elegant Georgian architecture surround the airy spaces of those many lovely squares.
Following our coach tour, we took off on our own to explore the city at street level, pausing for a twenty-first century cup of Starbucks before stopping at the Owens Thomas house for the guided tour with one of the many genteel white-haired ladies who seem to be the guardians of the city's heritage and its chief proponents. Designed by the eighteenth century English architect William Jay, this is one of the finest examples of the restoration efforts that have brought these elegant homes back to life. The tour starts in what was once the slave quarters--an uncomfortable reminder of the source of the wealth that made such elegant living possible.
A fine lunch recommendation from our tour guide:
Leopolds--an ice cream parlor filled with movie memorabilia (family scion who chose Hollywood production over ice cream,) where we enjoyed an excellent sandwich AND a truly delicious dessert!
After lunch, we continued our walking tour, taking in another mansion--this one not quite so grand, but impressive in its own way--and the civil war cemetery, with its hundreds of nineteenth century tombs and gravestones shaded by great old spreading live oak trees with Spanish moss wafting gently in the breeze.
A sad, romantic place, filled with ghosts from a tortured past.
A brief stop back at our B&B before starting out again for the evening, walking up to the Telfair Museum for a piano recital by the young pianist, Jonathan Biss, who gave a remarkable performance of works by Janacek, Schoenberg, Beethoven and Schubert in one of the spacious galleries there, surrounded by traditional landscape, portrait and history paintings. The word elegant occurs again...
And finally, after the concert, a light dinner at Jazz'd, a tapas bar, and a quiet walk home through the nearly deserted streets.
I have to say that I'm sensitive to the presence of ghosts hereabouts. Not in a literal sense, of course, but the past is very much present here. It's hard to forget that all this "elegance" was created on the backs of slaves, and the the Civil War that brought an end to slavery took the lives of so many men on both sides of the conflict. The spirit of those slaves and of those soldiers somehow lives on in this enchanted city. And the heritage of those years is not yet gone. It's hard not to notice that the inns, the restaurants, the museums and house tours are almost exclusively the domain of us white folk. The tour guides, the docents, the genteel white-haired ladies are lovely people, surely--but I note, I hope without a jaundiced eye, that they are almost all of them white. The black faces belong, for the most part, like this lovely young woman, to those serving us in a variety of ways.
Enough. I do not wish to seem ungracious. But there's a sadness here I wish I did not feel so powerfully as we enjoy our explorations...
What's so Funny...
March 25, 2008
... about Buster Keaton? We had a great laugh last night at the Savannah Music Festival, watching a couple of his old silent movies to the accompaniment of a wonderfully accomplished pianist. I mentioned a while ago, I think, the idea that farce is the true manifestation of tragedy in a world without the gods--and its hero is the clown, whose every move is absurd since it lacks the meaning guaranteed by some higher authority. Slapstick merely reflects our own deepest fears about the essential senselessness of out own actions. Above all, though, it's funny. As I say, we enjoyed some great belly laughs.
But that was the evening. We made a late start, lingering over breakfast and blog at our inn, and made our first stop for the day at the synagogue around the corner, the oldest in the United States--and still a thriving congregation to this day.
Unusually, it is built in the tradition of church architecture, with transept and nave and a kind of chancel for the ark where the torahs are kept. Neo-Gothic, in the Victorian manner, a beautifully proportioned space, with an organ loft at the west end.
At the opposite end of the same square is the Mercer Williams house,
scene of the book-and-movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"--a film that missed, we thought, on watching it the night before we left Los Angeles, but caught something of the charming decadence of this seductive city. We missed the tour by a couple of minutes and decided to return later, heading south into the lovely Forsyth Park. Here it is:
And here's your blogger, enjoying a cool, sunny day in the park:
These magnificent, centuries old live oak trees are everywhere, this one so big it was impossible to fit into a single frame. But you get the idea.
Here's another of them, and behind one of the graceful mansions for which Savannah is famed.
Almost as common as the trees are the antique shops. We poked into this one--a huge mansion itself, and every one of its four floors stacked higgledy-piggledy with decaying treasures:
The mansion itself, as we discovered on the upper floors, was crying out for a restoration job. How's this for faded grandeur?
But there's plenty of work that has been done, and continues to be done.
The houses we have visited prohibit interior photography, so you just have to imagine what these places look like inside. Quite gracious living, for the most part--and many of them, these days, converted into lawyers' offices! Or offices for the growing empire of the Savannah College of Art and Design, an art school that has grown from a tiny institute only a couple of decades ago to one that seems to occupy every corner of the city today, and organizes the concerts we have been attending.
Which brings us back to Buster Keaton and a wonderful evening of laughs, followed by a long walk through darkened streets and dinner at The Six Pence, an English pub, where I enjoyed bangers and mash (don't ask,) Ellie had a good Shepard's pie, and we shared a glass of excellent Newcastle Ale.
More from Savannah...
March 26, 2008
(First, in response to a request from Sen. Barack Obama's campaign for a "story," in a competition for dinner with the senator. Here's mine:I’m an old lefty. Born in England shortly before the start of World War II, I saw/heard bombs drop on innocent civilians. I saw good people scared out of their wits by war. I heard the drone of Heinkels, the whine of Messerschmidts—one crash-landed in a field not half a mile from our house. I have lived through austerity, and witnessed the survival of the human spirit through the worst of times.
I came to America in 1964. I have been a citizen since 1970. In the successive assassinations of President John Kennedy, the Reverend Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, I watched the assault on what I thought to be the noblest of the American spirit. Beginning with the California tax revolt in the early 1970s, I have watched with dismay the progressive rise of an egotistical, me-first materialism that, to my way of thinking, ran counter to our own best nature as a nation, the good heart of America.
I believe that Senator Obama has touched that heart in a way it sorely needs to be touched again. The response to his candidacy is evidence enough that it’s still beating. I would be honored to sit down with him over dinner and talk about the ways in which we can work together to revive it to full strength.
Thanks for listening.)
Now, back to Savannah... Up a bit earlier yesterday, and a bite to eat in the breakfast room. Then out for the day... starting with a visit to the SCAD shop just a couple of blocks away. Not unduly impressed by the wares, we walked on to the Juliette Gordon Low house (founder of the Girl Scout movement in America)
with a lovely garden...
... amd a knarly tree...
and on past children playing in one of the squares...
before stopping uptown for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Then on to the Teflair Museum and a tour of the current installation there--a local artist of the early 20th century. An interesting show from the point of view of Savannah--the streets we have walked, and some portraits of characters not unlike those we have seen around town in this early year of the 21st century. A very traditional approach, however, and not of great interest from the aesthetic point of view.
A quick visit to the City Market, which we had hoped might be an actual market place, but turned out to be nothing more that a tourist street with a number of eateries and souvenir shops. Returning to the museum square, we had much better luck at the contemporary museum, the Jepson Center for the Arts, in a brand new building designed by the Israeli architect Moshe Safdie.
A wonderful small museum, light, spacious and airy, with a grand staircase leading to the third floor, where we found two excellent exhibits: the first, cartoons by the Australian-born Oliphant, were a delightful satire on the recent American political scene, skewering Bush, his cronies, and his administration in general with scathing humor. The second show, "Fast Forward," was a selection of works on loan from the North Carolina Museum of Art--a small show, but one which managed to give an interesting international survey of art in a variety of media.
I love small museums like this one, where it's possible to take in the whole thing in a couple of easy hours without exhausting the body or the mind.
We enjoyed an excellent light lunch in the museum cafe, and found our way back to Leopold's for a second helping of their ice cream on the way back to our B&B to get ready for our morning departure. An hour in warm sunshine in a local park with a book made the late afternoon a very pleasant moment.
And finally, a blues concert. Great music, a lot of fun. But though I hate to be the scold, is it not just a wee bit odd to have nothing but white boys in the band,
and nothing but white faces in the audience--including, of course, our own? Correction, Ellie and I between us spotted one black face. Maybe we each spotted a different one. Which would make two, out of hundreds. And this is the blues? Didn't we borrow/steal it from black folks? Aren't they invited? I suppose it could be put that they choose not to come. At any event, it does seem that de facto segregation is still alive and thriving in this part of the world. Which goes to prove some points that Senator Obama made last week.
More later... from Charleston.
From Charleston
March 27, 2008
A nine-thirty pickup by Enterprise got delayed thanks to a miscommunication, and we were on the road for Charleston later than we had hoped. Armed with an old tour guide, we drove through the South Carolina Low Country and spent a while searching Lady's Island for the Whitehall Plantation for a recommended lunch and plantation visit, only to find a deserted area of tumbledown houses overgrown with weeds. Disappointed, we drove on to Beaufort, where we found the main street very tourist-y and the restaurants all crowded--except for one on a side street, where we enjoyed a good sandwich quietly, away from the crowds. Not liking much of what we had seen of Beaufort thus far, we started wandering the back streets, and were rewarded with some wonderful old homes and lush gardens. Here's a sampling:
On from Beaufort for the hour-long drive to Charleston, where we arrived mid-afternoon in comfortable time to check in to our rather fancy inn
and take a long walk along the raised sea-walk and through some of the residential streets at the south end of the city. Very beautiful, many lovely, manicured gardens and renovated houses gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
An excellent dinner at FIG, a good brisk walk from the hotel--and a slow, delightful walk home through the dimly lit back streets. Ellie loves to peer into windows from the street, and Church Street provided fertile ground for her perversion. No pictures, please...
Plantations
March 28, 2008
Breakfast at the inn, then a drive out highway 61 to visit Drayton Hall, a former rice plantation about twenty minutes out of Charleston on the Ashley River. In haste this morning, so I'll just post a few of the pictures we took of the house and gardens.
A subsequent stop at Magnolia Plantation was very brief. We were due back in town for some house and garden tours, and had left too little time to make the price of the ticket worthwhile. More about those houses later, if and when I manage to post the pictures. The above took a good long time. Not sure why posting pictures is proving such a problem here... Okay, here's a start:
... a cute little bottom, I thought!
And finally an excellent dinner at Magnolias, specializing in Southern cuisine. We shared all the way through--pan seared sea scallops and an arugula, pear and blue cheese salad for starters, and a parmesan crusted flouner with creek shrimp, Carolina rice pirloo, a warm asparagus-sweet corn salad, lump crab and lemon butter for entree. Served with a couple of glasses of very fine New Zealand sauvignon blanc. And a walk home through still-lively streets...
Goodbye from Charleston
March 29, 2008
It's a quiet moment on Saturday afternoon in our Charleston inn, and I'm taking the opportunity to sign off for this trip. I do have some more images to post, but it has proved such a laborious process that I'm choosing to wait until my return to Southern California. We need to be up and on the road at six tomorrow morning, Sunday, for what we hope will be no more than a two-hour drive back to Savannah airport. Thence to Dulles International in Washington and, if all goes well, a connecting flight from there back to Los Angeles. Wish us luck. We're hoping for no repeat of last Sunday's fiasco. The weather reports tell us to expect "scattered morning thunderstorms" in the area. We trust they'll scatter in some other direction!
Some Last Pictures...
March 30, 2008
... from Charleston. Taken during our "house and garden tour" on Friday and Saturday afternoons.
Good Monday Morning...!
March 31, 2008
... and I'm guessing y'all can't wait to hear the gruesome details of our return journey to Southern California. Am I right? Right or wrong, here goes...
We had been sitting in the bar (no other seats available) over a shared fried green tomato BLT at the famous Poogan's Porch restaurant in downtown--Poogan, by the way, should you be wondering, is the name of a mutt who refused to leave his porch when the last owners of the house sold it to the current restauranteurs--watching the weather station out of the corner of our eyes with growing apprehension of the thunderstorms that were predicted overnight and into the morning. I was imagining the two-hour drive from Charleston back to the Savannah airport through sheets of rain and bolts of lightning striking inches from our rental car; and Ellie, the take-off, with our small plane buffeted by squalls.
Didn't happen. We were up early, though, leaving our inn at six o'clock after a quick cup of coffee and on the road to the airport. Smooth sailing. Nary a drop of rain. Well, a slight drizzle, for a few minutes of the drive, and an easy rental car return. At the airport, we opted found the espresso machine down at Starbucks and opted, instead, for the business class lounge--at Savannah, a tiny room with a do-it-yourself coffee machine that produced, for me, hot milk when I pressed the cappuccino button. Ah well.
Let me explain. United had called, a week before, with a tempting offer. They would upgrade us to first class all the way home in exchange for a change in flight plan--we would have to leave a couple of hours earlier than planned. Sounded fine. Except that "first class" turned out to mean, on the flight from Savannah to Dulles Airport, the front seats on a single-cabin plane--and a free glass of orange juice. From Dulles to Los Angeles, it was first class on Ted, the stripped down version of United: smallish, crawl-over-your-neighbor seats and what used to be served for lunch, in the old days, in economy. None of those little luxuries like your own movie screen and tilt-up leg supports. Still, lest I sound curmudgeonly and ungrateful to United Airlines for their generous offer, it was a lot better than the economy seats on the way out.
Oh, gripe, gripe, gripe. But the truth is, air travel is truly a bit of a nightmare these days.
The real nightmare, though, was saved for our arrival at LAX. The usual wait for luggage at what's joyfully called the "caroussel", and at the curb for a bus to the long-term parking. Then, when we found our beloved little Prius and pressed the button to open up the doors and the trunk--nothing! Not a click, not a beep, nothing. The car remained obstinately closed. We called the triple A (sometimes, yes, you do thank the Almighty for the gift of cell phones) and explained the problem. A Prius, we thought, would present special break-in problems--and how could anyone jump-start a dead hybrid battery. The Toyota service people, of course, we enjoying their Sunday break. No help there. We had visions of spending the night at an airport hotel, calling our daughter for help...
Happily, though, after a wait in unusually cold and blustery weather in the charming confines of LAX C Lot, help arrived in the form of a AAA mechanic, who got us opened up AND started for the trip down to Laguna, where we were reunited, happily, with our George.
I have some final pictures to add to this travel log, and plan to do s o later. In the meantime, thanks for joining me. Back to The Buddha Diaries tomorrow.
