Getaway in Savannah, Georgia (Sunday)

This year all the stars aligned perfectly for us to be able to take a grown-ups only vacation! While my oldest was at scout camp, my younger two did the free day camp at the Marine Corps Museum, and then stayed with my mom for a week.  We met up with my sister-in-law and her husband in Savannah for a few days of fun and random mid-day naps! (Because if I don't have kids with me, I just want to nap.) Here's a run down of what we did.

Sunday: Getting In
My husband was SUPER concerned that we'd be late picking his sister up from the airport (closest is Savannah/Hilton Head International, which is really small), so we drove all night and got in to downtown Savannah around 2am.  Savannah is kicking on Saturday night/Sunday morning and they have this weird open container rule where people can just roam the streets with alcohol, so everyone was in a good mood.  We tried to get an early check in at our hotel (Residence Inn Savannah Midtown- it was just okay, nothing to really write home about, but we had Marriott points!) but they were completely booked, as was everything we passed, so we ended up paying $10 and sleeping in our van in a parking garage.

Welcome to the Hotel Dodge Grand Caravan.  

I've got to give a shoutout here to our Grand Caravan, which has seats that lay WAY flat and is super comfortable to sleep in.  Thanks, Dodge, for being so considerate of people who can't find a hotel.  One of my "must see" places was the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, but since I was traveling with 3 people who aren't religious, I only wanted to torture my husband, so we hit the 8am mass so that I could see the building and go to church all in one swoop. The cathedral is really beautiful, and you guys, early mass is SHORT! I'm not Catholic, but I can tell you that in the time it took for mass to happen, my church might have made it through the first worship set.  

And yes, we changed clothes.  Thanks McDonalds, for having lovely facilities that we were able to use to change in.  After mass, my crazy wonderful husband decided we couldn't pick up his sister after driving in our car, and so we had to find a car wash and wash/vacuum the car.  

For Real. 

Luckily there's one really close to the airport, so we did that and then picked up my SIL and her husband.  Unfortunately our hotel didn't have a room clean yet for an early check in (but they'd probably have one around noon), so we headed to Clary's for brunch/lunch.  The nicest part about this restaurant was that it's in a really historic neighborhood and we had fun peeking into gardens and taking pictures of oak trees covered in Spanish Moss while we waited. 

So we ate lunch....

Aaaand, our hotel was still booked and couldn't get us in any earlier than 3pm, so we headed over to the Savannah College of Art and Design's museum. 

Note: You can't actually take this picture.  There's only one "insert" but Joe is a Photoshop Ninja.

The SCAD museum is really neat, although I have a hard time paying for museums (the Smithsonians have ruined me for life).  It was $10 per person (military/senior discounts are available), but there was a family pass for $30 for a family of 4, and we are, actually, all related so we did that :)  The exhibits switch out, but while we were there they had a bunch of neat modern art, a Carolina Herrera exhibit with tons of gorgeous dresses, and something about complex motion- the bulldozer in the picture below actually looks like a cathedral and the man who made it didn't give it a motor, but everything can move, so it could, in theory, work.  The docents are all SCAD students and while most of them are just quietly lurking in the corners with iPads, several of them are SUPER EXCITED about art and want to tell you all the cool facts that they know.  We liked those people a lot.  I wish I'd made some kind of an effort to remember the names of the really fantastic docents, but as you may recall, I slept in my car the night before, so you're lucky I remember I went to this museum to begin with. So there. 

After dinner, we went back to our hotel (!!) room and I played the mom and made everyone pick things they wanted to do so that we didn't just sit around all week doing nothing because we had to plan each morning.  

Okay, I initially planned on doing this in one post, but this is getting a little long, so we're going to divide this sucker up.  So that was Sunday, and it ended with me getting to sleep in a bed.  Which was amazing.