And there I slept, not even noticing when they both got up, dressed, and went out of the room for coffee and tea. They came back up to the room at 10 AM, when I was just waking up. Checkout time was at 11, so I hustled through a shower and a change of my dressing while they packed their things. I packed up the trusty laptop, did a once-over of the room, and took pictures of both of them. I got a great picture of my mom’s butt as she was leaning over a bag, but she’d kill me if I posted it.

We checked out and drove down to River Street to park, as we definitely wanted to get something to eat before leaving. We decided on the Boar’s Head, and made our way in after walking around for about 45 minutes, taking last looks at things.

My aunt thought this meant the place was selling Boar’s Head brand meats for sandwiches, but this was not the case. They simply happen to share a part of their name in common. They did, however, have a couple of sandwiches on the menu, along with standard fare like burgers and salads for lunch. The restaurant is owned and run by a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.

Since I can never resist trying it, I ordered a cup of the She-Crab soup.

The way you see it there was the way it was presented to me. Sloppy presentation, I must say. I must also say that it was not very good at all. It was much too thick, almost dip-like in consistency, and had very little flavor. I did not finish it.

My aunt ordered shrimp cocktail to start, and a bloody mary as well. On Sundays in Savannah, liquor cannot be served until 12:30.

Mom had some steamed shrimp to begin. As with my soup and Barb’s shrimp cocktail, I was underwhelmed by the presentation.

They both ordered bacon cheeseburgers – lowfat be damned! – and I ordered a hot Georgia brown, which is turkey, ham, tomatoes, cheddar, and bacon layered atop a split English muffin and baked. I also had some fries.

My sandwich.

My fries.

The aftermath of mom’s shrimp and burger.

I wouldn’t recommend the Boar’s Head, at least not for lunch. Perhaps the dinner menu and service is better.

While I waited for the girls to use the facilities, I looked up toward Factor’s Walk and Bay Street. Not a soul to be seen.

A look down River Street to the west.

We dropped back into the candy store, as I wanted to pick up a bit of fudge before leaving. One of the workers was dipping out pralines.

Mom had mentioned that she wanted to go over the huge bridge we saw, that appears in some of the photos I’ve posted – the Talmadge bridge. So we navigated over to it and headed up.

Going over the bridge on US 17 will eventually land you in Hilton Head, SC. For us, not actually going that far, it wound up being a short trip over a really tall bridge to not much of anything.

Downtown Savannah from the Talmadge.

The descent from the bridge is into South Carolina. This business was open, and presumably completely honest about what was available inside.

A short way along, the closed Showboat.

We turned around and headed back to Georgia.

And then continued on our way home. We decided to take along some seagull poop as a memento.

It hadn’t rained at all through the weekend in Savannah, but we hit intermittent spots of heavy rain on the highway. We also encountered a traffic jam.

What in the world could it be on a Sunday afternoon?

Doesn’t look good.

No, it doesn’t look good at all for someone who wasn’t quite as adept as managing themselves in the rain as others.

That traffic and the rain dinged us by about a half hour on the trip back, but we still made it in before dinner time. After unloading the car, and sorting things out, we kicked off our shoes and relaxed. In my case, that meant sandals, and another laugh at the tan lines across the tops of my feet.

And there you have it: our interlude in Savannah.

I thought about food no less in Savannah than I do at home. That is to say, I thought about food almost constantly. I came up with Monday night’s menu while we were walking around this weekend, and while we were planning on having a relatively small gathering, it has turned into something of a dinner party for somewhere between 11 and 13 people, depending on two ifs.

The menu:

Citrus tilapia with a quartet of salsas (orange, mango, peach, and pineapple)
Lemon steamed broccoli
Roma tomatoes stuffed with zucchini, criminis, and gruyere
Fresh multigrain bread
Salad

I was going to try to make lemon souffles for dessert, but I’m leaning toward creme brulee with fresh berries instead, since the custards can be prepared well ahead of time. One of our invitees is bringing a chocolate cake along. It should be a grand time, with a good mix of people. As usual, if we know you and you’re in the area, you’re welcome to come along. Just drop me a note or give one of us a call to let us know you’ll be dining with us Monday evening between 6 and 6:30 PM.

Ciao.

As we walked, I snapped some photos of a few buildings along the route. The architecture of these buildings is amazing to me, as is the fact that many of them are relatively unchanged, structurally, from their original designs.

We walked several blocks to the east along Broughton.

Quite a lot of people were out and about. It was, after all, a fine Saturday afternoon in a tourist kind of town.

The building above is the Kress building. The Kress family was known for their five and dime stores, akin to the old Woolworth stores. Their buildings were also known for their distinct architectural style. This particular building has been converted, like many others, into a mixed commercial and residential facility, with retail shops below, and lofts available on the second floor.

Very few of the houses in the historic district are in terrible disrepair. Most have been restored and kept up nicely, and some are a bit more colorful than others.

We turned down Abercorn and started making our way south to the cemetery.

The arch to the grounds.

The cemetery is deathly quiet. It was also quite hot, as you might imagine. The dead didn’t appear to mind all that much.

I sought out some shade for a bit of a rest, and spent a little quality time with someone whose tombstone had unfortunately eroded to the point where it was unreadable.

We pushed on to the cathedral. When we’d passed it earlier during the tour, the red sign was out: this means there is a function or service going on, and tourists are asked to refrain from entering for a look and photos. By the time we reached the cathedral in the afternoon, the wedding that had taken place was long over, and we entered freely into the cool air.

The gentlemen in the door were part of the wedding party. One is holding a clear plastic box with a wedding dress within it.

The interior, looking up a bit toward the nave.

The nave itself.

One of the many large stained glass windows, with four smaller under it.

A closer look at the larger one up top.

Mom and Barb, lighting candles.

A view to the rear and up.

A closer view of the upper rear.

We headed back outside to the park and sat near a fountain to take a break. A look at the cathedral from that vantage point.

Mom and me. The cathedral is reflected in my sunglasses.

After a brief rest, we headed down and west a couple of blocks to the Mercer House. This may be more familiar to people as the house in the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, based on the book of the same name. In fact, the book is known as “The Book” around town, and there is actually a gift shop near the Mercer House known as The Book Gift Shop.

We took a tour of the bottom floor of the house, which is now a museum. Photos are not permitted within the house itself or in the sunken garden between the house and the carriage house. The carriage house is now a gift shop and is the entrance to the garden and the main house. An incredibly brief history of the house is here; they make no mention of the shooting that occurred in the house, but do mention – as our guide did – that Jim Williams restored about 50-60 buildings during his lifetime.

Our guide also told us that during the shooting of the film, because of the great number and value of the items Williams had collected over the years, no insurance company would take on the task of insuring the project. So the production company stored the goods and actually recreated a lot of the paintings within the house for the shoot. The family had sold off some of them while filming was ongoing, and the recreations were gifted to the family by Clint Eastwood when filming had completed so that the interior would look the same as it had before filming started.

Within the house, we saw the main hallway, the dining room, the lower study, the front sitting room, and the rear sitting room. The front room was instantly recognizable to me from the movie. Our guide informed us that the room was the closest any room had been to remaining untouched from Williams’ day. There was a cat – a huge, fat, black cat – sleeping in one of the chairs behind a cordoned off area. Our guide told us that the cat lived there, and could be petted, but still had his claws and might pet back. Since animals and small children love me, I went right ahead and petted the cat, who moved only enough for me to get a good scratching under his chin. Other than that, he slept through everything.

We were unable to go upstairs to see the ballroom where Williams had installed his pipe organ, as due to fire code, publicly-accecssible buildings must have two stairwells, and the house only had one. Barb was disappointed by this, but got over it pretty quickly.

From the Mercer House, we started to wind our way back toward the river and The Lady and Sons, where we had reservations for 8:30 that night. With a little time to kill, we stopped in at Jen’s and Friends (voted best new neighborhood bar, 2005) on Bull Street to have a drink. It was only a block away from The Lady and Sons, and we headed that way a tad early to see if we could get in and eat before our scheduled time. We were in luck, and were permitted entry just after 8 PM.

Out of the three days, this day involved the most walking, even though most of the morning was spent on a bus. Everything we’d been eating no doubt washed right off us as we walked around, enjoying the sights and the city.

Saturday dawned bright, clear, and hot, as summer mornings are wont to do in the South. While the girls went downstairs to grab some coffee and tea, I stayed upstairs and poured some formula down the tube. I had no idea when we would be eating, or if I would be able to eat any of it, and the heat takes its toll on you when you’re out and about. I finished that, redid the dressing around my tube, and went downstairs to join the girls and await the bus or trolley that was to pick us up for the tour.

As it happened, we were picked up in a limo instead and whisked off to the main office of the tour operator to wait for the others who would be joining us. Once everyone was assembled, we were appropriately labelled.

One of the companies that does a trolley tour throughout historic Savannah thought it would be nice to have a tour showing All Things Paula. Apparently, according to some of the folks I spoke to, Paula herself didn’t really think anyone would be so interested to be willing to shell out $53 each for such a tour. But, according to our tour guide, since last March, they have sold 10,000 – yes, you read that right – tickets for the tour.

The tour encompasses a ride in a small bus past The Lady and Sons restaurant and the tremendous line down the block.

It also involves a ride past the original, smaller location, a visit to a small fresh market where Paula purchased her things when she ran The Bag Lady, a ride past the townhouse she lived in for awhile, a ride past the house she lived in earlier (I think while running The Bag Lady), a visit to the chapel where Paula and Michael got married, and lunch. Our lunch was at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House – they shifted the tour lunches there from The Lady and Sons to help increase word about it, and because The Lady and Sons is just so incredibly busy these days. We actually did lunch fairly early in the tour, as they had three more busloads of people following our early one. We had 37 people in our group, and thankfully, the bus was air-conditioned, because like most July days in the South, it was about 95 and humid.

It was just a bit after 10 AM as we rode by The Lady and Sons. Lunch service does not begin until 11 AM, but they open the host station to take names for tables (for lunch) at 9:30 AM. All of these people were waiting to put their names on the list for lunch. The restaurant does not take reservations per se. More on that shortly.

Bubba’s is actually outside of Savannah proper as most people know it.

They had a set menu for the tour folks, since the meal is included in the price of the ticket. The menu included grilled oysters on the half shell (from Apalachicola, FL, on the Gulf coast, as there really isn’t much commercial oyster product in GA), grouper po’ boys, fried shrimp, grilled chicken, and a couple of other things. They serve cornbread before the meal with some butter. I can’t eat oysters right now, but my aunt said they were good (but heck, what isn’t good, grilled?).

My mom had the shrimp and said they were tasty, with a light battering instead of the horrible, heavy type of batter you find at some places.

I had the fried grouper po’ boy, and it had the same type of battering. It wasn’t bad, although it was a bit chewier than I’d have liked.

The restaurant itself backs up to the Intracoastal Waterway – think the canals of Venice, with lots of marshland around it, and that’s pretty much it – and the parking lot is huge.

I think they plan on that place gaining in popularity the same way The Lady and Sons did. All the staff I spoke to said that Paula is exactly the same in person as she is on tv: funny, talkative, and given to playing cards and practical jokes. However, the food was rather ordinary from what I saw of the tour menu and the regular menu. Nothing jumped out at me as something for which I’d make a special trip outside of the main town area.

Out in front of the restaurant is a pond with some koi and a giant carp who unfortunately was too camera shy for me to get a picture.

They also have a spider for good luck.

After lunch, we boarded the bus again and drove out to the chapel where Paula and Michael were married. The chapel is on the grounds of the Bethesda Orphanage, which was founded in 1740 by George Whitefield (pronounced wit-feeled) on the banks of what became known as the Moon River – the Moon River immortalized in song by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini in 1961. Today, it’s known as the Bethesda Home for Boys and is host mainly to boys who have made their way through the legal system for one reason or another. There is now a school on the grounds; in years past, the boys attended public school with the kids from around the area, including our tour guide, who said she went through school with some Bethesda boys.

The chapel is not used for regular services, but is rented out for special occasions, like weddings, and the boys who live on the land are free to use it as well, of course. The drive is lined with ancient trees, dripping with moss.

It’s very quiet in the area around the chapel, which is quite small.

This is a view of the nave from the rearmost pew. According to the people to whom I spoke, the pews date from the 1920s.

This is a view from the small gallery upstairs.

When you step outside, you’re once again in the quiet embrace of the trees.

From there, we rode around and gawked at the house where Paula and her sons lived when she ran The Bag Lady – I can’t imagine living there now, with anywhere from three to five tour buses riding past your house on a daily basis. That would make me insane.

We stopped at Polk’s, where Paula would gather up her daily supplies for whatever she was making for The Bag lady. As most people know, she suffered from agoraphobia, and this was one of the trips she was able to make each day to see Becky, who ran the place, and who would allow her to pay for whatever she picked up after the day was over. Paula would send her boys out to sell whatever she’d made, then pay for the goods afterwards. It’s nice to live in a place where you know your neighbors well enough to be able to help them in that manner.

The “BBQ” notation on the sign caught my attention, of course, as did the smell of smoke. There was a giant smoker set up on the side of the building. Behind the smoker is the firebox. Both dials read just under 200 degrees – I stepped up, uninvited, on the platform to read them.

The inside of the market is not very large, and some of the produce looked a little wilted in the heat. But, they were very busy. My mom picked up some more honey to try. We love honey.

Outside, they were boiling peanuts.

There was also this strange plant with fuzzy things growing on it. Anyone know what this is?

From there it was a ride past the townhouse to which Paula moved when she opened The Lady and Sons, and as a bonus, a ride past Chippewa Square. This is where they filmed Tom Hanks waiting for the bus in Forrest Gump. There is no bench here, though, as that was a movie prop, and the film has the traffic running clockwise around the square (which is really a circle), even though all the traffic through the squares runs counterclockwise.

One of the benefits of the tour is that you can call The Lady and Sons and actually make a reservation, although those are limited. We wound up with a table that night at 8:30 PM (dinner service begins at 5 PM), so that wasn’t too bad. We decided to be dropped back at the hotel after the tour.

Once inside, we cooled down a bit and unloaded the goodie bags provided as part of the tour.

The bag is a thermal bag – I suppose if you wanted to take your lunch to work, it would keep things cool with an ice pack in it. Inside were a brochure, a reservation ticket for The Lady and Sons (the one that allowed you to actually make the aforementioned reservation), a sample praline from one of the candy stores, and a freebie bottle from Paula’s eponymous prepackaged food line. In our case, it was Silly Salt – basically, a seasoning salt. She has other items I’ll talk about later.

Skipping ahead a bit…

When we returned to The Lady and Sons that evening just after 8 PM, there weren’t as many people outside waiting, but of course dinner had been running for over three hours at that point, and some people were being told that no more names were being taken. Bummer for them.

The Lady and Sons takes up a corner on Congress St., if you’re familiar with Savannah. There are three floors: diners are served on the first and third floors, and the second floor has the kitchen. On the first floor just inside the main door is a small area where you can buy Paula stuff: books, aprons, t shirts, hats, and so on. There’s also a station set up where a woman was working away, making hoecakes. We were given a laminated ticket (“You’re invited to join us for dinner on the third floor”) and took the elevator up. There is a hostess that meets you at the elevator, takes your ticket, and seats you – I expect they have to fend off people trying to cut through the throngs waiting outside. The bar is on the third floor, and we sat at a high top table just across from it. They will serve food at the bar, but it wasn’t clear to me if people could just wander in for a drink and also eat, or if they had to have the golden ticket to get in first. There were only a few people at the bar, but the rest of the place, both on the first and third floors, was packed. I asked our server how many tables they had available, and she said they could serve about 200 people at the same time between the two floors.

It’s very dark inside, and my camera battery was giving out by that point. I still managed a few shots, though, including one of mom and Barb, happy as clams.

The biggest draw for most people to The Lady and Sons is, of course, the buffet. All three of us chose that. The buffet comes with a dessert, and I ordered a cup of the crab soup as a starter. The soup was excellent, I have to say: it was cream based, no vegetables beyond some onions I found, and had huge chunks of blue crab floating around in it. I could tell we were at Paula’s place, because when I left the soup sitting after stirring it and allowed it to settle, you could clearly see a ring of what appeared to be butter around the outside edge of the soup against the bowl. Unfortunately, I did not get a good photo of that. They also start you off with a rather huge cheese biscuit and a hot hoecake. For those unfamiliar with hoecakes, they are made of cornmeal, but they are fried on a griddle like a pancacke. The biscuit I’d rate top-notch, the hoecake ordinary.

On the buffet that night: fried chicken, fried catfish, pot roast, mashed potatoes, collard greens, black-eyed peas, lima beans, sweet potatoes, and probably one or two other sides. The things I just listed are the things we all ate to one degree or another. They do have a very small salad bar as well, but out of perhaps two dozen people I watched go up, only one came back with salad. For everyone else, it was the mains only.

Our table.

My plate.

Barb’s plate.

Mom’s plate.

The sweet potatoes were great: hot, soft, laced with butter and brown sugar. Ditto the black-eyed peas, which had bacon or backfat and small green beans or shoots, with a hint of spice to them. My mom thought the peas were oversalted. I hate lima beans personally and will never eat them, but both my mom and aunt had them and judged them good; my aunt had some collards and said they were quite good. The pot roast fell apart if you looked at it too intently, and that and the gravy went very well with the mashed potatoes, which were creamy without being runny or too heavy. The catfish was fried whole in a cornmeal mixture and was serviceable. The chicken seemed to be battered very simply: flour, salt, pepper. It was very crispy, not greasy, and better than the catfish but not as good as the roast, in my opinion – and I love me some fried chicken. Overall, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about, but then again, I’m used to Southern style cooking, done by some of the best ever, including my Granny.

Dessert for us was southern peach cobbler with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream, and it was fantastic: the top crust was thick and bubbly, and the peaches were firm but tender. The cobbler was not cloyingly sweet – which is how some places try to make up for flavorless peaches – and the combination of the warmth of the cobbler and the coolness of the ice cream made it delightful.

Would I recommend either of the restaurants? For the novelty of saying you’ve been there, certainly. The food was rather unremarkable, in my opinion, and didn’t strike me as anything that you couldn’t get somewhere else. I can say that I found it amusing to come across business cards on the way out of The Lady and Sons: Paula’s title is “owner”, while each of the sons’ cards had “son” as their titles. A good sense of humor is very important.

One thing that small towns do is embrace their native sons and daughters who make it to the big time. Paula’s books and products are absolutely everywhere in Savannah, and I don’t think there was a single shop we saw that didn’t have something of hers, including a product called Paula’s Butt Massage. Another bottle we saw said Paula’s Butt Rub. I’m not sure which is the current name. There were also two different types of barbeque sauce (one ketchup based and one mustard based), a steak and prime rib rub (much the same as the butt rub, except with mesquite), a regular seasoned salt, the silly salt, and something called house seasoning. One shop also sold the prepackaged biscuit and hoecake mixes. Paula didn’t start her business until she was approaching her 50′s, so I expect there’s plenty of time for me to get my food-related act together. I’ll need a kickass name. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know.

It has been three years since I’ve been to Savannah, GA. Coincidentally, it’s been three years since I had a real break of any sort from the day to day operations of the business. I don’t count the cancer diagnosis and treatment as a “real” break, as it was anything but relaxing and enjoyable. Unlike, for instance, my most recent trip to Savannah, in the company of my mom and one of my aunts.

Why Savannah? Well, there are several reasons, really. My aunt really, really wanted to go take “The Paula Deen Tour”. Yes, there really is such a thing. My mom agreed that it would be fun, and I just love Savannah. We decided awhile ago that we would take ourselves on up there, as we say here in the South.

And so we did.

We left Friday morning. Savannah is only just over two hours from us here, so it’s not an epic journey by any means, except inasmuch as it’s the first time I’ve been anywhere in a number of years and it’s the first trip since the cancer thing and it’s nice to be alive to do these sorts of things from time to time.

All smiles. Mom and Barb:

And, for the first time ever, I’ll actually post a photo of me. I hate pictures of myself. Especially now.

The day was sunny and the road was open. We had the radio blasting some oldies and the girls were snacking away on the drive. What more could one ask?

The Georgia state line is not that far north of here, so it wasn’t long before we were passing into the peach state.

Our hotel was at the edge of the historic district. This is a good thing, because Savannah really is a walking kind of town. You can buy passes from the different trolley companies, or ride the Cat shuttle. I prefer to walk, as sometimes it can take forever for the trolley to wind its way over its route to where you actually want to be relative to where you happen to be when you catch it. And walk we did, a lot. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The suite. Mom promptly turned the air conditioner on the “arctic blast” setting.

A large bathroom. The small sign by the sink assures us that they’re glad we’re here and if we’ve neglected to pack something, they’ll be delighted to help us out.

We didn’t stick around there long: it was time to head down to River Street – the street that runs along the Savannah River. It is the main drag for eating and shopping, and we were quite interested in the former. It’s also not a bad way to start the day in the city.

Shipping was vitally important to Savannah in the 1800s: the buildings along River Street were mostly warehouses in years past, with a lot of cotton warehousing especially. Shipping is still important to Savannah, although these days the giant container ships make their way under the Talmadge Bridge to the main port, and the cargo is no longer cotton. The shops and restaurants that now populate Factor’s Walk have certain requirements for their remodeling, as most buildings in historic districts do. You can find original beams, rafters, and even floors in many of the buildings as you stroll in and out. The street itself is still cobbled with grey bricks, and the passes up to and down from Bay Street, where there is a lot of vehicle traffic, has a mixture of cobbles, stone, and brick. It can be very hard on your feet. If you decide to go to Savannah – and you should – please wear comfortable (to you) shoes. There’s nothing sadder than a broken down tourist sitting forlornly on a bench because they didn’t pay adequate attention to their footwear choice.

We made our way to the very edge of River Street. This is a view from up top, on Bay.

The water sparkled in the bright sunshine, and a faint breeze blew in off the river. Not enough to cool things down, but enough to dry some of the sweat that rolls off you when you’re hiking around a Southern city in the heart of July.

We descended a very steep set of stairs – one of many – to River Street so we could really begin our adventure.

You can see the cobbles and bricks here. The lower portion of River Street is open to vehicle traffic; however, most people prefer to do as we did, and just walk everywhere. Parking is incredibly limited below.

We began our adventure at Chart House. Nice table settings.

We had seen someone chowing down on a basket of steamed shrimp and a beer on our way down the street, and decided that’s what mom wanted. But they didn’t serve steamed shrimp here, so we opted for something lighter than that. For the girls, that meant dessert. For me, soup.

Creme brulee for mom. The custard itself was very good, as was the raspberry puree. The other, orange one, she didn’t like, but she couldn’t identify it. I didn’t taste it to identify it, but I suppose I should have.

Apple crumb pie with cinnamon ice cream for Barb.

Lobster bisque with crab for me. This is a half kettle, and could have used a wipe of the side.

Still, it was very good, with big lumps of crab meat.

Sated for the moment, we continued our trek. This is another set of very steep stairs, near the Hyatt.

A view down a portion of River Street.

City Hall.

This is the dome atop the building. As you can see, it’s just before 3 PM Eastern time. The dome could use a touch up paint job, but the bells work and the clock chimes every quarter hour, with a toll on the hour.

There are a couple of candy shops on River Street, and a third in City Market, which is a few blocks in and has shops, artists, and restaurants.

We were told that the original shop was opened by a husband and wife team, who then divorced. One of them got the shop. The other, deciding that the candy business was where they wanted to be, opened a new candy shop, using the same recipes. Yet another insight into small town life.

I used to have quite a sweet tooth before I gave up eating by mouth for about nine months. These days, if something is too sweet, it hurts my teeth, but not enough sugar in something designed to be sweet, and I can’t really taste it at all. Bit of a double-edged sword there. But I have a soft spot for fudge.

The place was packed and very busy, but I managed to sneak around to get a shot behind the counter.

Everyone is still all smiles. There’s certainly nothing to frown about!

If you’re so inclined, you can take a cruise along the river on a paddleboat. We were not inclined to do so.

We walked on, with me playing the role of photobug.

It was plenty hot out, so we ducked into One Eyed Lizzy’s for a drink.

The River Street Inn. This is where I stayed the last time I was in Savannah. I’d have liked to stayed again, but they were booked on this particular weekend.

Another look down River Street.

We meandered along to One Eyed Lizzy’s again, this time for food.

Where we enjoyed a margarita.

Some crab dip, with a little spicy heat behind it.

My mom had her steamed shrimp.

My aunt and I both had fried grouper fingers. Who knew grouper had fingers? They were delicious: lightly battered, fried perfectly, and tender.

It was then time to walk off some of the things we’d eaten thus far. It was also almost sunset by then. Our walk took us to the pavilion, where we sat down for a few minutes to watch the sun drop below the horizon.

There was a man playing a mandolin on one of the benches nearby. It made for a nice musical background to the setting sun.

As the sun set, the largest container ship I’ve ever seen in my life steamed by on its way back out to the ocean. We caught sight of some of the crew as the ship passed, and got some waves from them.

They moved out of view fairly quickly for such a huge ship. The sun remained undeterred, and continued its descent regardless of what we were doing.

We watched the last of the light fade.

The port’s light are on, and the street is still bustling.

We joined the crowd, and finally decided to start back toward the hotel since it had been a long day. As we made our way back, we stopped into Vic’s Coffee Shop, which is downstairs from Vic’s Restaurant.

I chose a cappuccino, which nearly took my tongue off at the first sip. My mom had a mocha caramel frappa-something or other, with whipped cream.

Barb had a cone of banana split ice cream, with a dollop of whipped cream atop.

After we finished, we made our way back to the hotel, where the girls promptly went to sleep. I stayed up awhile to unload the photos to the laptop and recharge the batteries in my phone and camera, then dropped off to sleep myself. We had to get our rest. After all, tomorrow, we would be vicariously seeing a “This is Your Life” on Paula Deen.

Now, however, the parking lot is busy during the day and packed in the evening. The place is no longer serving up Chinese food, though. It has been converted to a Latin-inspired place called La Puerta Plata (The Silver Door). We decided to stop off there and pick up some food to see how it was – and if it justified the traffic the place seems to get.

The menu is not very large, but has enough of a selection that I wouldn’t walk out immediately were I there to eat. The menu is in Spanish with some English translations, although some of those translations leave a little room for improvement – simply translating something as “meat” for instance, is not helpful to someone who does not speak Spanish, like my mother. I walked my mother through the menu, from the stew (with chicken, beef, plantains, and potatoes) to bistec y cebolla (steak and onion). She wasn’t very interested in the stew made with goat or the seafood items, which consisted mostly of shrimp (or shrimps, as the menu said, translating literally from camarones). We settled on the steak and onions and an order of chuletas (pork chops), with an order of stew. The entrees come with a choice of white or yellow rice, red or black beans, and salad, or plantains and salad. We opted for the salads and one of each of the rice and beans.

The food is not spectacular, but is serviceable. The steak was a bit overdone, and the chops uninspiring, although my mom perked those up a bit with a little of one of the hot sauces that I have (Blind Betty’s Pineapple Pizzazz). Both the rice and beans was standard fare, not bad, but not great. Since I couldn’t actually taste the other food, I did have a small taste of the broth of the stew. It had a curious undertone to it, most likely the result of so many ingredients and seasonings in it. It didn’t help that it was more soup-like thatn stew-like – Rachael Ray would probably term it a “stoup”, halfway between a soup and a stew.

Overall? The place most likely will not be given another chance by the family, but I’ll probably try something when I can eat again, just to make sure they’re given a fair shot.