Colossal Waste: Southern Swing, May 2010, Day 2

There is something about that first morning you wake up in a hotel that makes it a trip. Waking up in your own bed and heading to the airport is not the same as waking up in a strange room in a strange town. As you saw yesterday, this Hyatt Place has everything you could possibly ask for in a relatively comfortable small space. But just to be a nerd, I took a picture of something in this room that I found particularly awesome.

This panel is on the side of the entertainment center. Every home needs this. Really. You can literally connect anything you want to this television without reaching behind it. Hyatt Place, you are truly the traveller's friend. (And we really need to get a laptop with an hdmi out, because this is becoming more and more common and then we could watch most of our television shows on the laptop while we are away from home.)

We loaded into that Chevy Impala and headed to Savannah, Georgia.

I turned from the moving car and snapped this one.

I could not get a picture of it, but along the North Carolinian highway we saw two warehouse stores, side by side. The first, fireworks. The second, liquor. Brilliant. We also saw a gas station with a gun store and fireworks store attached. Even more brilliant.

For the record, that is North Carolina.

For the record, that is South Carolina.

Yet another shot from the moving car. In this case, we were moving very fast and I had had a difficult time framing a few previous efforts. Then I get this puppy, accidentally framed to show the beautiful sky surrounding the Savannah sign. If I knew of the Patron Saint of Moving Car Photography, I would thank her now.

The Savannah river.

For the record, that is Georgia.

When you are born and raised in California, and you think that maybe Piggly Wiggly is a fictional market mentioned in movies, there is a sense of wonder every time that you see one in person. There really is a store named Piggly Wiggly. And I just have to ask, as someone who had grammar drilled into his head for much of his life, should it not be Wiggly Piggly?

Our first look at the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, spanning the Savannah river, from just outside the city. As it turns out, I took many pictures of this bridge.

We got to the The Bohemian Hotel, a new hotel in Savannah so hip and modern along the riverside that I swear to you it could hold its own in any hipster Manhattan neighborhood. I failed to take any pictures of the lobby, with its frosted glass and gigantic wooden balls.

Here is the hip Bohemian hotel room. And did you know that Bohemia is a region in the western Czech Republic? And for the record, "Bohemian," became a label for the untraditional, artist lifestyle in early 19th century France, when said artists would live in low-rent Gypsy neighborhoods. The term came from the French name for Gypsies, "bohémien." In other words, a slur that became cool.

I would add that the owners of this hotel likely went with the name The Bohemian to honor the Savannah College of Art and Design, one of the more respected art schools in the country.

After some work time in the hotel room, we head out for dinner. The Bohemian is right on the river, and I had used google maps on the iPhone to see all the restaurants around us.

Here is the view immediately out the riverside doors of The Bohemian.

Standing alongside the Savannah river, it seemed like an ideal time for a panorama.

We walked by several, shall we say, less classy restaurants that focus on serving fried food and beer. Luckily, my phone had showed us there was a Chart House just up the way, and we kept walking.

The view of the bridge from our table at the Chart House.

My clam chowder, easily one of the best clam chowders I have had.

Barbie's lobster bisque, which she felt was the best lobster bisque she has ever had.

Barbie's salad.

I took another bridge shot, since the change in the sunset kind of demanded it.

My mis salmon, wrapped in prosciutto. To be honest, I was disappointed.

Barbie's baked crab cake was excellent.

After dinner we walked over to the closest gas station to get some bottled water and chips. And, for the record, yes, it was the BP on Martin Luther King Boulevard, four blocks from the hotel. And, for the record, yes, the nature of the neighborhood changed a tad abruptly when you crossed that street. We saw the same thing in Detroit. Very confusing. Los Angeles has no street which separates radically different neighborhoods. I am never quite sure how people deal with it.

We walked back to the hotel and went up to the rooftop bar.

The view from The Bohemian rooftop bar.

The Bohemian lobby at night. We were supposed to spend two nights in Savannah, but Barbie learned of Thursday activities related to this weekend's wedding in Charleston. So we laid out a plan for the next day that would involve a lovely walking tour designed by yours truly which would end at The Bohemian's sister hotel, and there we would get a courtesy ride over to our hotel so that we could hop into the Impala and head over to Charleston.

But... before we go to sleep there is time for a tech victory story. You see, I was semi-obsessed with seeing the second to last episode of LOST before the big LOST finale this coming Sunday. Why? I did not want to get home and have 3 1/2 hours of LOST to catch up on while the rest of the world discussed it. You see, we were on an airplane while this episode first ran, but I have seen many hotels have a, "Just Missed TV," feature where you can pay $5 to watch TV shows you missed. Well, The Bohemian had no such option. However, it did have a, "Web TV," option. But the Web TV option only listed a few networks, not including ABC. I shifted into nerd gear, managed to get to the menu bar of the browser to open, and got it to go to ABC.com. Soon enough, the penultimate episode of LOST was playing on the TV for free, and I knew that when the weekend came I could watch the LOST finale in a hotel room.

Okay, you were bored by that. Sorry.