Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Our Day Trip

This past Monday we decided to take a little day trip to St. Mary's, Georgia. We were originally going on Sunday, but literally at the last moment changed our minds!! Anyhow, Monday morning we headed up to St. Mary's and had ourselves a nice little day. It started pouring rain and cut our trip short, but we still had a good time!

On our way!



Crossing into Georgia. It's nice living so close to the border.



Orange Hall, one of our first stops. We stopped at the Welcome Center, only to find out it was closed for renovations. A lot of things were under renovation. We talked to a nice elderly lady who gave us the scoop and recommended a good lunch destination. On the way up to the house I stopped Richard and told him to listen. He didn't hear anything...my point exactly! It was QUIET there! A big change from the bustling city.



Marianne's, a great recommendation. The owner originally lived here, lost her husband and moved away, only to come back and open a small cafe...which eventually turned into this. She's received several awards, been written up in magazines like Southern Living, and obviously done quite well!




The bathroom. The whole place was very cozy.



Richard perusing the menu!




And his choice, Crab Cakes, they were featured in Southern Living.



And my choice; chicken salad, baked beans, and potato salad. Delicious!



Another view of Marianne's. They made you feel like you were coming home.



The garden's at Marianne's.



Pretty flowers.



This was a little shop called The French Quarter. It was a really neat shop with a huge assortment of this and that. The prices were huge too! That's why they call it window shopping!



A view of the St. Mary's River.



Another view of the St. Mary's River.



Getting rained on! I love Richard's "Huh" face!



We also stopped off at The Oak Grove Cemetery. It wasn't nearly as elaborate as the cemeteries in Savannah. Our next stop was the Howard Gilman Park. It was a beautiful park, unfortunately it started pouring as we got there. Too bad. One of our last stops was a little museum. I didn't get any pictures there either.
It's kind of interesting. St. Mary's is a totally different way of life than here in Jacksonville. It is a very slow pace of life and people are friendly!
I was excited to go to a place called the Golden Pineapple. It was a huge gift shop and looked really neat. Unfortunately, it was closed. I guess regardless of store hours, if you don't want to open shop you don't! Like I said, a very different way of life!
So we headed out of St. Mary's and got back on the road. Richard wanted to check out fireworks so we stopped and he got himself something, which he promptly set off last night! We then decided to take US 17 back to A1A and head through Fernandina Beach on the way home. We completely missed Fernandina.
And we are home again! The view of downtown coming off of the Dames Point Bridge.

4 comments:

Melissa said...

Oohh, I want to go and eat at Marianne's! It looks so neat, and Richards crab cakes look so yummy! Did you see the chapel where John Kennedy Jr. was married? I think that is where you can also catch a ferry to go over to the island where the wild horses are. if I remember right.

Neugier said...

It looks like you had a really good time! Maybe next time we head towards Florida we can stop there. Thanks for sharing.

Angela said...

Wow . . . looks like you had a great trip!! Love the pictures and love the pictures of the food . . . yum . . . makes me want to go back to the U.S. just for the food!!!

Emily said...

No, I don't recall seeing anything about that. By the time we got to the river it was storming. I don't know if the ferry was running. We found out when we got back to Jax that there was a bad fire on Cumberland Island. Crazy because we didn't see or smell anything!