Marnie, Carol's TA, had a bunch of Independence Air
credits that were going to dodo around New Year's,
so she offered us some; so we decided to find a city
where neither of us had been - a limited number of
choices, mostly Huntsville, Nashville, and Savannah.
So Savannah it was.

DH1557 BOS IAD 1030 1214 CRJ 3D

I admit the staff were fine - much nicer than the old
Atlantic Coast guys - and actually relatively competent.
But old Kerry Skeen probably to this day has no idea
what amount of bad will his old airline had caused.
I actually dreaded stepping on the aircraft; it's been
a while since I had that feeling: probably since the
mothballing of those unairworthy ACA 19-seaters.

Actually, everything was on time and fairly smooth; our FA
was a jolly retiree (by the looks of him). Service was
minimal but with a smile. Bad things: the plane felt
pretty cramped, the leather seats thin and uncomfortable;
and the recorded safety announcement, by some down-and-going
television comedian, was grating and offensive. Catering was
scanty: various Pepsi products, Arizona iced tea, and juices
from cans. Mints and hot paper towels shortly before
touchdown. The flight arrived, a quite cowboyish landing,
half an hour early (thanks to the miracle of padded
schedules), which, coupled with Carol's cellphone service,
led to a slight contretemps - I called her with the news
that we were on the ground, but the call didn't go through,
so I deduced she was still at security and so breezed to the
main terminal, where I figured I'd surprise her. Turns out,
the reason the phone didn't ring was because it was being
ornery, and she was actually waiting at the loading area of
gate A5 instead of the debarking area of the same gate, so
there was this comedy of errors thing going for nearly an
hour until we met up at the C17 Red Carpet Club, which
turned out to be worthless as there was no cheese and
crackers for lunch. I spent two coupons on booze - a Sam
was okay, and a Remy VSOP was somewhat nicer than okay.

DH1946 IAD SAV 1445 1627 CRJ 11CD

Back to gate A4 for our onward - another Canadair, but
this time in the wayback. A cute little munchkin FA, just
the right size for a munchkin plane. He made a point to say
that DH had quicker boarding than the real airlines but
didn't note that that was because the aircraft are
unpleasantly small.

Drink service was as before, only they were serving beer
and wine ($5 a drink), so I had the Independence Chard,
made by Oasis. Low concentration, curious mix of sweet,
sour, and salty. Melony-tropical fruit, but not very good,
with a plasticky finish.

Another uneventful flight, somewhat better landing, and
we were out in the warm sunshine by 4:30. Downtown bus
came at 4:33, and the question was, should we take it for
a buck a head or a taxi for $25++? The bus was okay and
didn't take an inordinate amount of time. Dropped us off
a block from the hotel.

The Doubletree, formerly the Radisson, bills itself as a
boutique hotel, which it isn't. It's decent, though; gave
us a pleasant little room with a nice four-poster king
bed; 4 lamps, all completely different styles, including
one whose base was made out of old encyclopedias; and a
funny smell. Also, one of the lamps was burned out, which
we brought to the attention of the extremely jolly front
desk person, and it was in fact fixed by the time we got
back from dinner. The funny smell, it came to me, was
evidence of a smoking room hastily converted to non-,
coupled with mildew in the air-conditioning unit. The
chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies that come with checkin
were crunchy but good.

Everyone we'd talked to said we just had to go to Paula
Deen's Lady and Sons restaurant, and the attendant on
my first flight, who looked as though he enjoyed his
food, praised the buffet highly. Carol wasn't optimistic
about our chances to get in, but as it was early, we
tried our luck, and we were given a little admission chit
to the third-floor dining room, where we were greeted and
seated by an enthusiastic young crew. Started off with
iced tea (ordered unsweet, came sweet, easily and quickly
corrected) and Bass Ale in bottle. We did the buffet:

Fried chicken was nicely crisp and nicely fresh, but the
batter was hardly seasoned at all, normal for food around
here, but hardly salted at all, not normal. (The spicing
options at table were salt, premilled pepper, Texas Pete
hot sauce, and Texas Pete pickled peppers.) On our first
trip, there was only white meat! but there were thighs
and drummers the second time round.

A Low Country shrimp boil was the best of the meat
courses - very plump, fresh, sweet shrimp, some slightly
overcooked but most fine, ring sausage (salty), taters
(didn't try), and slices of corn on the cob (supersweet,
okay). All steamed together and liberally coated with an
extremely cayenne-heavy shrimp boil.

What was represented as country fried steak was actually
some kind of Salisbury steak thing, decent, rather starchy,
in a green-pepper-scented brown gravy. I didn't care for it
but give it points for being wholesome. Carol actually had
a small second serving of it to go with mashed potatoes.

Baked chicken with stuffing had nice plump thighs, rather
well salted, over a very banal mushy bread stuffing that
had leftover vegetables in it.

The nine side dishes were

green beans and ham - very mushy, rather hammy, ok;

collards and bacon - a little on the tough and bitter side
but ok (points off for serving with tongs and there being
no way to scoop up the pot likker);

mashed candied sweet potatoes - extremely sweet, would
have been ok for dessert but quite jarring as is;

rice - looked normal; didn't try;

mashed potatoes - looked normal; didn't try;

zucchini casserole topped with O&C type onions - tried
and found, well, as expected;

black-eyed peas - underseasoned but okay;

a kernel corn and grits mixed thing that Carol had but
I didn't; and

macaroni and cheese, which was quite Cheddary and in
fact pretty good, and I had seconds of it.

A forlorn-looking salad bar in the corner housed the
usual suspects, only a little seedier than usual.

Biscuits and hoe cakes are brought to the table; these
are accompanied by a Log Cabinish syrup. The former are
fluffy, huge, and pretty good; but in a demonstration
of the inconsistency here that people have complained
about on the Internet, the corn cakes vary widely, from
the fluffy and perfectly fine one that I was served to
the grease-soaked disaster that Carol got, from the same
server, at the same time. The grease, by the way, tastes
synthetic, both for these cakes and for the chicken.

Dessert is peach cobbler, which tasted like raw Bisquick,
banana pudding right from the back of the Nabisco Vanilla
Wafer box, or some other thing that we didn't get to try.

We were filled up for a fair price (considering that I
did eat 10 very large shrimp), but the food was variable,
some (roast chicken, mac and cheese) surprisingly good,
much of the rest no better than the Hometown Buffet.

Carol pointed out that this sort of semi-homemade cooking
now passes for the height of gastronomy, in this world of
working numerous jobs and having barely enough time to
nuke a Lean Cuisine for the kids.

We walked around downtown for an hour or so and then
turned in.