Savannah: Bonaventure Cemetery

This is the best time of the year to work at a Jewish organization—we get five days off work in September, and two more in October for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and a few other holidays. Francesca and I took advantage of the Monday/Tuesday we had off last week and went to Savannah, Georgia. We got a ridiculously good flight deal ($150/roundtrip) and we're both big fans of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (the book more so than the movie).

Savannah is a beautiful town, and I reread the book a few weeks ago so I'd be up to speed on all the spots we needed to see. I'd been to Savannah a few times before when my sister lived there, but never without my family or as an adult. I have a much greater appreciation for travel and all things creepy now that I'm older and Savannah is lousy with history, ghost stories and beautiful old things.

One stop I knew we had to make was Bonaventure Cemetery. I had never been, and it features prominently in the book. Even if it hadn't, it's a historical cemetery built on the site of an old plantation and is consistently referred to as one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the country.

There is no obvious way to get to Bonaventure—located about 3.5 miles from the historical downtown—without having a car, and everyone we spoke to made it sound like it would be a very difficult trip unless we booked a tour. We didn't want to take a guided tour, so we decided to try Uber and it worked perfectly. Our cars to and from the cemetery didn't take longer than 5 minutes to arrive and the trip was about $11 each way—cheaper than a tour and we had complete freedom to wander as long as and wherever we liked.

The cemetery was incredibly beautiful and very peaceful. We hardly saw anyone else while we were there, which is something I love about cemeteries in general. The spanish moss dripping from the huge trees manages to look both beautiful and sinister at the same time, and the cemetery was well-kept but just the right amount of overgrown. It was also relayed to us that Bonaventure was enormous, which we didn't really find to be true—it's big, for sure, but we spent a few hours walking at a leisurely pace and saw most everything.

There are a few famous Savannah residents interred at Bonaventure, including the novelist and poet Conrad Aiken, military generals, governors, songwriter Johnny Mercer and Gracie Watson. Gracie Watson has a particularly haunting grave marker, set off behind a locked gate on a well-manicured plot of land with an inscription that reads:

"Little Gracie Watson was born in 1883, the only child of her parents. Her father was manager of the Pulaski House, one of Savannah’s leading hotels, where the beautiful and charming little girl was a favorite with the guests. Two days before Easter, in April 1889, Gracie died of pneumonia at the age of six. In 1890, when the rising sculptor, John Walz, moved to Savannah, he carved from a photograph this life-sized, delicately detailed marble statue, which for almost a century has captured the interest of all passersby."

We saw a very sad tombstone for a set of triplets (Henrietta, Emma and John Henry), met an adorable (and fast) little lizard darting around the stones, saw one of the tackiest stones I've ever seen (sorry to the Upchurch family, but your piano just doesn't belong in Bonaventure) and saw some really wonderful typography. Without Francesca I would have never spotted the most excellent skull-and-crossbones emblem for the Knights of Pythias, but it was Martha Kirksey's epitaph that will stay will me for a long time—She did what she could.