Savannah: Vintage Paradise

This magpie is in love with Savannah and all of its sparkle, rust, and Spanish moss.  I'd been there once before a few years ago and found it charming, but this trip confirmed my crush.  Could I live there?  Absolutely.  I want a tiny cottage or carriage house, encrusted with paint and age, slightly crumbling, covered in wisteria.  I would most likely transform into a Southern Gothic writer overnight.    

Here are just a few of the places we visited that I know I'll return to:

• The SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) Store for gifts and craft ideas
• Gallery Espresso for people watching and pastry
• Bull Street for beauty 
• Vinnie Van Go-Go's for pizza and more people watching
• Forsythe Park for everything a city park should be
• The waterfront for tacky tourist fun and free praline samples
• The Clothing Warehouse for vintage cowboy boots
• The Savannah Bee Company for tupelo honey!
• 24 E for amazing furniture and design at fantastic prices
• The Paris Market and Brocante for all my glittery addictions
• Broughton Street itself for window shopping, coffee, and even more people watching
• The Gryphon Tea Room--only peeked in, but will have tea there next time!  The building itself is as pretty as a tea cake.

At the Paris market I scooped up grab bags of cheap but pretty beads and baubles for crafting.  I wanted to scoop up other things, too, like the vintage x-ray table, the giant carnival-light letters, the perfume originally concocted for Catherine de Medici, or the cafe table encrusted in oyster shells (actually, I think my friend Marlowe could whip one of these up in no time), but I was good. I kept in mind that we were flying home and shipping costs money, and we are trying to be thrifty. The beads and broken brooches were just enough sparkle to keep me smiling.  

My self control in Savannah meant that I could have fun the next day when Steve, Todd, and I went thrift-store shopping on Hilton Head.  Okay, so there may be twenty-nine golf courses on that eleven-mile island, but I think there are also at least that many charity shops.  I may be exaggerating slightly, but not much.  I also got to have some fun in my brother's amazing antiques shop, Damn Yankees.  More on Mark and Steve and their cat adventures very soon.