Then just a few moments ago, before I started composing this first post on a recent visit to Savannah, Ga., it occurred to me that ... Photo Potpourri had a very inauspicious beginning ... that maybe I should mark the decade milestone in the same manner -- inauspiciously.
So inauspicious was this blog's debut, in fact, that it launched with nary an image anywhere in the inaugural post. Yes, sadly (I think), the first entry was nothing but text. And it was pretty corny, to boot. I guess in retrospect, that was kind of a tip of the hat to my long career in newspapers. Um, the all-text first post, I mean ... not the corn (I hope)!
So I thought I'd mark the 10th anniversary with a series of posts on my latest trip to Savannah, Ga.
As loyal Photo Potpourri visitors know by now, Savannah has become a favorite getaway spot for Lee Ann and me. Since we've moved to the Raleigh area, it's now just a five-hour drive from home (vs. 13+ from Indianapolis). We love the city's walkability (specifically, its magnificently beautiful neighborhood squares/parks, and the fact that you can get to a lot in and around the downtown area). Savannah also has great restaurants, southern charm and a rich history, and it has landscapes and seascapes that are photogenic (although you have to travel a short bit to reach water, and Tybee Island isn't that far away).
And oh ... in Savannah, you're allow to drink alcoholic beverages out in public as long they are carried in non-glass transparent containers.
To start the series, I thought I'd do something I normally save until the end of a travel series post -- talk about dining. That's because perhaps the highlight of this trip was our delight with an English-style pub that we stopped at for the first time -- Six Pence Pub. We liked it so much, in fact, that we went back a second time two days later.
We'd passed Six Pence on more than one occasion on previous visits (a shot of the pub's front facade leads off the post), but we didn't stop in. If you've seen my other Savannah posts, you might remember a shot of the bright red old telephone booth next to an alley 30 feet or so from the pub's front door. That's it on the right ... and you can see a sliver of the booth on the far right of the lead-off image.Lee Ann researched the place when we got to town and shared with me the good reviews and mentioned they had shepherd's pie (a favorite of Lee Ann's) and pot roast and mashed potatoes entrees on the menu -- both of which fetched hearty endorsements from previous patrons.
We SO much liked our pot roast and shepherd's pie meals early in our visit, that we did something we've never done before while in Savannah -- we returned to the same place for a second meal on the same trip to town. In fact, we ended up double-dipping twice; the other place we stopped at on two occasions was The Lady and Sons, a Paula Deen-owned country cooking place whose all-you-can-eat buffet for $18 is hard to look past ... just like the fried chicken served in the buffet! We always stop at The Lady and Sons when we're in Savannah, and I've covered the eatery in a previous post, so I won't bother discussing it again. But I digress ...
For beverages on both visits, I had a pint of a pale ale (left) that I've since heard described as the flagship craft beer from SweetWater Brewery of Atlanta, the South's largest craft brewery, and it was delicious. So I had it again on the second visit, and was not disappointed. Lee Ann opted twice for the Frangelico hot coffee specialty beverage (right), and she said it was very good. (We would special order a Frengelico coffee for Lee Ann at a different pub later in our stay in Savannah, and it was not even close to the Six Pence's quality. But they at least tried, considering it was not a beverage on their regular drink menu.)My pot roast and mashed potatoes (pictured first below) were topped with a delicious gravy. I also received a small scoop of cranberry sauce and baby carrots, the vegetable of the day. The meal was divine, which is why I ordered it on the second visit, too (and the pot roast portion was a little heftier that trip). The vegetable on the second visit was zucchini and squash (also good).
Lee Ann really enjoyed her shepherd's pie (second photo below), topped with mashed potatoes and cheddar cheese. It came with a salad, which I think she topped with a poppy-seed dressing.
Six Pence is notable, too, for its heavy but tasteful use of wood at the bar, dining room and even the walls throughout the eatery, its tin mold-pattern ceiling ... and its impressionist style oil paintings of scenes integrating the pub itself and its iconic telephone booth. Examples of those are below.
As always, to view a larger, sharper version of a photo, simply click on it. This is particularly helpful if you access the blog using a mobile device. So see all my shoots from the recent visit to Savannah, follow the link in this sentence and peruse all of the dated galleries from November 2018. The new folder on the small shops in the historic district are from this visit as well.
Photo geek stuff: The two exterior shots (the front facade and telephone booth) were taken with my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens and bracketed for three exposures to meld into one in post-processing using Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software. All of the interior shots (including the food) were taken with my iPhone X and modified in Photoshop Elements 15 only to enhance shadow detail.
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