Foods I Crave: Southside Seafood Market, Savannah GA

Every single time I visit Savannah, Georgia, I have to stop at the Southside Seafood Market down the road from the Savannah Mall. It is just one of those places that makes food that you crave for days and days and days!

This is really all it is! It's like the size of a large 2-car garage. So awesome!

At the Southside Seafood Market, you can buy seafood by the pound raw or you can pay a little extra and have them cook it for you. And man, do they always cook it perfectly!

My absolute favorite thing to order is the Fried Lobster Tail Platter. It's $13.99 and comes with 2 juicy lobster tails and your pick of a side. I usually get the corn, but they've got all the typical southern side dishes to choose from, including hush puppies. Man, I'm even drooling just thinking about it!

Boiled lobster tails w/garlic butter and corn on the left, Fried lobster tails w/hush puppies on the right

I went a little crazy this weekend since it has been a while since I've been to Savannah, and I ordered fried Swai (fish) as well, and it was perfectly fried and crispy and lightly salty and juicy and boy oh boy! My friend ordered a pound of shrimp boiled and it was topped with their garlic butter sauce and he got some Mahi Mahi for himself as well. It was a good day! :)

This little hole in the wall shop is not actually a restaurant since there is nowhere for you to eat nearby. If I can control myself long enough to refrain from eating in the car, I prefer to take the food to a nearby park and have a picnic if the seagulls aren't feeling too greedy. This past weekend, I went to Lake Mayer Park a few miles away and it was spectacular. It was a perfect day for a picnic, even in the middle of February!

Lake Mayer Park in Savannah, Georgia

I cannot rave about this place enough! If you are EVER in the Savannah area, you definitely cannot go wrong if you choose to stop here for a delicious meal.

The Fried Swai

I've Got the Itch

My name is Tippe and I am a travelholic.

Hanging out with Ava
on Wednesday

Yes, it's true! It seems that I will only be at "home" in Utah for two - yes, TWO! - of the next TEN weekends! As we speak, I am sitting in an airport on a layover waiting for a flight to Georgia. And last weekend I was visiting Madison/Milwaukee/Chicago. And the weekend before that I was in Paris. Thankfully I was in Utah the weekend before that one, because that was when my very first and very beautiful niece, Ava, was born! Don't worry - I will most definitely teach her my Jedi Travel techniques one day soon!

Took a laptop selfie at CLT airport just now. It's proof!

My travel agenda is mainly dictated by any deals I can find out there, and last year was a difficult year to beat in terms of deals. It is a rare thing for me to not have trips planned, but at the start of 2016, I honestly had ZERO flights booked. And all of a sudden, a barrage of deals hit the blogosphere and now here I am :) So here is a summary of what the next 10 weeks hold in store for me:

• This weekend: Savannah, GA. And Hilton Head Island, SC. Just because London didn't work out.
• Next weekend: New York City! I will be attending the Women's Travel Festival and helping to spread the word about this amazing Facebook group and travel community I'm a part of called Girls Love Travel. And mayyyybeee I'll have my website up by then! I just ordered business cards so that's exciting!
• 3rd weekend: Utah. Yes, I will be home this weekend in March. My parents are flying in to visit Ava and I have to pick them up from the airport. I also hope to watch Aida at the Utah Opera this weekend.
• 4th weekend: Orlando. My parents are also going to visit DisneyWorld and Universal Studios while they're in the mainland and I'll join them for a couple of days.
• 5th weekend. Utah again. I have to take my parents to the airport again when they fly home to Hawaii this weekend.
• 6th weekend. Phoenix. I will be attending the American Planning Association's National Planning Conference in Phoenix for work this week! Yes, occasionally I have to work on the weekends, too. I booked my trip so I get there a day early and I hope to visit Sedona and/or part of the Grand Canyon this weekend as well.
• 7th weekend. Japan! I took advantage of the dirt cheap fares to Tokyo last week. I have no idea what I'll do there yet, but I do know that I will be spending at least one night in a capsule hotel/hostel if only for the experience. I also want to find many Totoro things!
• 8th and 9th weekend. Australia! This is an actual vacation and not just a fun weekend for me. I will be taking 10 days and visiting Sydney and Melbourne. I want to come back to do the Great Barrier Reef when I get SCUBA certified, but for now I don't have enough time to do all three places, sadly. Very sadly. Why is Australia so far away??? 
• 10th weekend. Puerto Rico. Yes, I also took advantage of the $200 flight deal to San Juan from SLC. Should be a good time!

I am going to be SOOOO tired by the time I get back from all these trips in May. But it is SO worth it! And this doesn't include the trip to Rio I have booked for Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. Yeah, I'm a total travel addict! But hey, if you ever want me to come visit you wherever you are, let me know, and you can be sure I'll make it happen :)

Flying from CLE to CLT early this morning. It's definitely winter!

Travel On My Mind

It takes a lot of energy to travel all the time. I was looking at my travel plans for the next few months, and I have left very little time for me to catch up on my sleep on the weekends in the wake of a spree of fare wars and really good airfare deals to places like Puerto Rico and Tokyo. And while I am really enjoying my travel life on my nights and weekends, I really hope it doesn't catch up to me eventually.

This weekend, I took a road trip to help my old roommate move back to Wisconsin and I still have not been able to sleep at a normal hour between trying to work on my website and attempting to socialize here. I feel like everyone gets bitten by the travel bug at some point in their life, but once you realize a way to make it happen with the time, energy, and resources that you have available to you, it is SO hard to stop, even when it might not be completely good for you.  O:)

It's not about how travel is fun or leisurely. Travel is actually quite stressful and it takes work to figure out travel plans and to be on the move from one place to the next. The reward is definitely worth it, but it is not all rainbows and butterflies like a lot of people perceive travel to be. I don't feel like I am constantly on vacation. I feel like the world has become an extension of my home and when I travel, I am constantly learning and experiencing new and important things which help to build both myself and the world around me. Unless you are paying big bucks to have a travel agent and/or tour group plan all the details of a trip out for you, travel will always take work. I think I am just lucky that planning travel is something that I really enjoy and have picked up pretty easily. I am a planner by trade after all! I don't know if any of this makes sense because it is around 3am right now, but I hope someone out there understands my ramblings :)

As far as my travel plans go, while I don't mind returning to places I have visited already, like Rio de Janeiro and Paris this year, I think I need to start using my resources to see new places and new things going forward.  And that is going to take some work for me to figure out some of those new places I can realistically go to with what vacation time I have left and what miles and cash I have available. Which is not a lot now that I have a handful of trips booked for the near future. We will see if I can get creative with this. Hearing about the new flights to Cuba in the news gets me excited for my travel future. I can't wait to figure this out!