I am finally getting a few minutes to write a brief summary of our trip. You all know how hectic it is getting back from vacation, tons of stuff piled up at work and then my mother in law had to go into the hospital, etc, etc. Anyway, everyone is fine now and I will have a little time to write. This is a brief summary and I hope to be able to give you some more details over the next few days.

We arrived in St. Augustine on Sat April 30th for a 2 night stay at The Casa Monica Hotel. The hotel was beautiful and hectic. 3 weddings taking place. Our room was a bit small but very nice. Beautiful Spanish style furnishings throuhout the hotel.
We had dinner at 95 Cordova in the hotel. Fantastic!!! Great food and wonderful service. Hubby had the best seared tuna ever and I loved my crab ravioli with shrimp. Calamari appetizer was unbelievable! No room for dessert. Had Sunday brunch there the next day and food was equally delish. Very nice assortment of foods. Terrific snow crab claws and oysters. The bread pudding is to-die-for. Never tasted any so fantastic. I could have made it my whole meal.
Tour of the Fort was very intersting, but The Lightner Museum was the highlight of the city for me. What an intersting place! A must see for anyone visiting St. Augustine.

Could not wait to get to Savannah and check out our hotel, The Mansion On Forsyth Park. Thanks to help from Rocky and GoTravel, we got a fantastic grand opening rate of $139.00 per night from TravelZoo. Arrived there on Monday after noon. The hotel is very beautiful. Fabulous artwork throughout the hotel. Looks like no expense was spared on furniture and fixtures. Fresh flowers in wall vases in the elevators! The staff was very friendly and helpful. Our room was outrageous. (I posted a bunch of pictures on Travel Advisor which should be up in the next few days. I will try to get them on a website, so you can access them shortly.) The room had a big Roman tub with a window that we through to the bedroom. Very unusual, but gorgeous. Fresh orchids in the bathroom. Very plush and comfy robe and slippers. We walked down to Riverstreet (about a mile from the hotel) after checking in. It was a great walk through Forsyth Park and then through many of the beautiful squares. I immediately fell in love with Savannah and the city was the highlight of the whole trip for me. My husband is in a wheelchair, so getting around River Street was a bit difficult, but not impossible. Thank goodness I read here that you could get down there by the elevator in The Hyatt! Thanks for that advice! By time we finished walking all over, we were ready for dinner. We had made reservations for Tuesday night at The Old Pink House, but did not have any for Monday. I took the advice of many Fodorites and we walked over to Bistro Savannah. Thanks to you all!!! It was fantastic! Hubby and I both had tilapia, prepared differently, but both dishes were fabulous.

Have to run now. Will write more about our next day in Savannah tomorrow.

I am SO happy that you had a good trip and enjoyed both towns!
I will keep The Mansions in mind if we get to visit before leaving this area.
I am glad that St Aug was good for you too..That Lightener Museum is great! I could spend hours there, just looking at all the glass!
Thanks for posting!

Hello MarciaK, what a lovely trip report! Obviously you had a wonderful time. How wonderful that Fodorites here helped you with the planning of your trip. I hope that you can post about your visit in Charleston also. It is such a beautiful city. Best wishes. And crab ravoli with shrimp has me drooling!! That sounds so good.

Great trip MarciaK.
Makes us want a return visit asap.
Looking forward to Part 2.

Which reminds me:
Please post your subsequent reports HERE also (as a reply) so they're not separated and difficult to find.
(frequently done here)

Hi Marcia. Great report and looking forward to the rest.

Can't believe you walked all the way from the Mansion to River Street with a wheelchair along. Good for you! There couldn't be a prettier walk in Savannah - but it's a long one!

I had a few minutes, so I will add a bit more about the trip. I walk 3 miles everyday with my dog, though a bit harder pushing a wheelchair, I just love to walk and look forward to it. Savannah is just so beautiful and we had absolutely perfect weather, so it was a true delight.

We had breakfast at Clary's Cafe on Tuesday morning, which was only a few blocks from our hotel. One thing I must say about the street in Savannah, I don't know who came up with the "accessibility" plan. There would be a cut out for the wheelchair on one end of the block and then when we walked down to the other end there was no cut out and we would have to backtrack. Worse than that, in crossing some streets, there was a cutout on one side of the crosswalk and no cut out directly opposite on the other side of the crosswalk! Give me a break. I understand that this is a historic district, but whoever put a cut out on only one side of a crosswalk?? Anyway, enough venting. Our breakfast a Clary's was great. Having seen "Midnight in the Garden" again the week before our trip, it was a must! The breakfast was great, reasonable and the people were so friendly. We said we would definitely return the next day.

After breakfast, we walked down to the Visitor's Center where we could catch the Old Towne Trolley. Although we did not have any special discount tickets, some others boarding had $10.00 off coupons and the ticket person was kind enough to extend that to us as well. Made it about half the $21 regular price! We stayed on only a couple of stops and got off at the City Market. Boy the smell of those pralines sure make your mouth water! We checked out the shops and then walked over to the Telfair Museum. We both enjoyed it very much, but not as much as Lightner. Our breakfast was so filling, we just shared a home-made ice cream for lunch. We were looking forward to our dinner at The Olde Pink House and wanted to have plenty of room! We got back on the Trolley and this time stayed on for the whole tour. Betsy, our tour guide was funny and entertaining, as well as informative. Getting off the Trolley back at the visitors center gave us the rest of the afternoon to backtrack to the hotel and visit all the places we passed on the tour so we could take photos. Hubby is still in the process of getting our photos up on something that is viewable to all, so I will let you know when that is done. We got back to The Mansion with some time to relax and change before dinner. This time we drove to Olde Pink House. Some waiters carried the wheelchair up the front stairs and then we were seated on the first level. What a beautiful place. Of course I had to walk around and check out all the floors. The downstairs tavern is really neat. Nice place to have a drink and hear some music, but not accessible. And the steps!!! I truly don't know how the waitstaff can carry trays and go up and down those steep flights! We had to have the she crab soup, which was devine. Hubby had the flounder which was as delicious as all reported. I had seared scallops, which were equally yummy. He always lucks out because I need help finishing mine, so he get some of everything.
More to come later.

It sounds as if you had a great time. If I didn't already live in Savannah, I certainly would be tempted to visit. Please come back in the early spring when the Azaleas and Dogwoods are in bloom. It is fantasy land!!!

And how did your trip to Charleston go? The two cities are so different. It's really not easy to compare them.
Aileen

While it was another beautiful day in Savannah on Wednesday morning, we knew bad weather was coming for our stay in Charleston. We walked over to Clary's again for another filling breakfast of blueberry pancakes for me and French toast for hubby. We took a few more photos and then headed out for Charleston hoping to arrive early and start our touring. Unfortunately, a huge accident on 95 made us detour for several miles and we did not get to Charleston until 3. We headed immediately to the visitor's center and grabbed a tour that was starting at 3:15. The tour gave us a great overview and history of the city...maybe a little too much history for me. But I learned many interesting things about this wealthiest of pre-Revolutionary War cities. Our tour was not an on and off type, so there was no opportunity for photos except for one quick stop near the water. When we checked into The Andrew Pickney Inn at about 5 it was already very cloudy. We declined their $12.00 per night parking offer, since the young woman at the visitor's center told us we could park on any street or in any lot for free with our hanicapped sticker. The lobby of the Inn seemed warm and cozy and there were delicious, fresh baked cookies that were still warm from the oven. Unfortunately, there was no one around to help us with our luggage and to save time, I took it all up to the room myself. We were in the building across the street from the lobby. It seemed that most of the rooms were over there. The place was full and we were given a special accessible room, which we usually don't request, on the 4th floor. That is the same floor where the rooftop breakfast buffet is located. Our room with queen bed was nicely decorated (reminded me of Bombay Company store at the mall) and adequate. The biggest disappointment was there was no window! Nowhere to look outside! The bathroom was spacious and I was thrilled to find toiletries from Bath and Body Works, my favorite! Turning on the weather channel was bad news...a big storm approached. Once again relying on the suggestions of you wonderful Fodorites, we had made reservations for dinner at Poogan's Porch and we were not disappointed. Once again we had another great meal. Will write some more later.

We both had delicious soups and seafood dishes for dinner. We enjoyed the friendly staff and lovely room. I bought one of their cute T-shirts. After dinner we walked through Charleston Place. What a beautiful lobby!! We listened to some music in the lobby and then called it a night.

I awoke to the sound of a thundering downpour on the roof. Unfortunately the weatherpeople were right this time. It was nasty, windy and POURING!!! So much for our plans to tour Magnolia Plantation! We both were glad we did the tour bus yesterday.

Our rooftop breakfast proved to be interesting. There is not a whole lot of space to sit other than the rooftop. We managed to squeeze into a small space outside the breakfast room with 2 other couples from San Francisco who were in town for a wedding. It turned out to be an enjoyable morning, eating and chatting for a few hours, since we were all stuck there.

Fortunately, I had taken my rain slicker with us and I decided to put it on and go exploring a bit on my own. It is impossible to deal with the wheelchair in the rain! We were just a block from Market Street which was great. Each market building was covered, so I was able to do some shopping. Lots of intersting craft items. When I got back, we lounged around for awhile and then I got our car and we rode around town a little. Returned to some of the spots we had visited with the tour bus. It seemed that there would be little let up with the rain. By dinner time, neither of us were in the mood to get "dressed" for our reservations at S.N.O.B., so I called an cancelled. I guess we'll have to catch that the next visit. I just wanted someplace to go where I did not have to change out of my jeans! A friend from work had done our trip in September and I remembered they ate in Sticky Fingers with their teenage daughter. I knew that would be casual and it was very close to our hotel. We both love ribs and it turned out to be great. We were both pleasantly surprised. The weather was supposed to improve on Friday and we hoped it would be good enough to get to Magnolia Plantation.

We were happy to see the sun peeking out of the clouds on Friday morning. It was still quite chilly and windy and we could not eat our breakfast outside. Too bad. It is such a nice setting. We left right after breakfast and luckily, the weather continued to improve. As it turned out, the Plantation was on our way back to Florida.
Got to go now...more to come.

Sorry it has taken me a little while to get back to this report!

Fortunately, by time we finished breakfast, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. We checked out and immediately walked up to Market St. I had to show hubby all the intersting stores and stalls. I guess everybody else had the same idea because the streets were jammed. We found some great "thank you" gifts for our friends pet sitting for our dog and cats. We also picked up some cute things for our garden in a store called The Eagles Nest. Soon we were on our way to Magnolia Plantation. Although it is a beautiful place to visit, we both thought it was quite costly. Even with our AAA discount, it was $40.00 for the two of us to go in and take the tram tour. They told us that the grounds were wheelchair accesible and that they even had special wheelchairs that made it easier to push on the terrain. That sounded great, but it really was NOT the case. Maybe if you had a small child, but pushing an adult on those gravel paths was not what we considered accessible!! The tram trip was fabulous. We got to see all the grounds and learned some very intersting facts about the plantation and life in Charleston way back when. After the tour, I walked through some of the gardens myself and took lots of photos. I would have liked to spend a bit more time, but I knew we had a 5 hour drive back to our stop-over in Jacksonville, so I really could not tour around too long.

We made reservations at The Adam Mark Hotel in Jacksonville. A stayover there would leave me about a 4 hour managable drive back to home in Boca Raton on Saturday. As we approached the location of the hotel, I noticed the sign for their restaurant, Bravo, but no sign for the hotel. We pulled up front and a nice woman approached our car and said "Welcome to the Hyatt!" OOOPS! I said that we were looking for The Adams Mark, and she said THe Hyatt bought it out in April! Fortunately, they were honoring all reservations. Whew!! Although we had reservations for a king size bed, they were all out, so they upgraded us to a riverview, double queen. The view was spectacular! The room was quite nice, clean, etc. We walked just one block over to Riverside for a Mexican dinner. The next morning we had a buffet brunch in the hotel and we were on the road back home.

We really loved our trip and we were happy that we had only one day of bad weather. I will post the website address where we load our photos as soon as hubby gets them up there. In the meantime, I have some photos posted on TripAdvisor.com under The Masion on Forsyth Park ("Beautiful place for a beautiful city") and Casa Monica Hotel ("Beautiful Hotel-Fabulous Restaurant"), if you want to take a peak at the hotel photos.

One more thing....I would like to give special thanks to all the Fordorites who gave us great lodging and restaurant recommendations for this trip, espcially Scarlett, Rocky and GoTravel. Thank you all. I know I can always count on you!!!

MarciaK, thank you so much for the detailed trip report. It brought back some sweet memories of places I have been, although I don't think the meals I ate were nearly as good as the ones you and your husband ate! I'm glad that despite the Charleston deluge, you had a lovely trip. I'll be using it for our next trip to the Charleston/Savannah area.

Marcia, what a great report and thanks for the kind words!

I hate that you cancelled your reservations at SNOB. We've eaten there many times in jeans. You would not have felt out of place. With sweatshirts and trainers maybe but with a blouse and shoes you would have been fine.

Hope you come back soon!

I am happy that you had such a lovely time! Thank you for the kind words~

Topping MarciaK's trip report. If someone else can top her question about crime in Savannah, then we all can share in her trip report on a great trip to Savannah!