Savannah

SAVANNAH

I loved Savannah. I did a deep dive analysis comparing Savannah to nearby Charleston and I came out enjoying Savannah more – from a tourist perspective. Savannah’s squares are the city’s defining feature and its such a unique feature compared to other US cities. It’s not necessarily the wonder of any individual square, although Forsyth Park is spectacular, but the aggregate of all the squares and how they fit together are the city’s signature piece. It’s a great city to walk through, although with the humidity, it can be tough to be outside during the middle of the day.

We started the Savannah experience from the South heading North. This was a nice way to ease into the city from the non-touristy area, which is in the North. We saw beautiful home after beautiful home and immediately wanted to move to the city, although after checking prices, there’s no Southern discount. We drove around and kept stopping to take more photos of Savannah.

Forsyth Park is a glorious hub of urban activity. There’s a cool café. There’s benches to sit and people watch. There’s tennis courts and sports fields. And there’s a fountain worthy of tens of photos in the center. Although there is a Confederate War Monument…because we are in the South.

One morning I walked along Savannah’s waterfront – River Street was an historical shipping hub but it’s given way to a tourist hub now. We skipped dining down here. I say down here because even though this district is in the “uptown” section of Savannah, it is a steep walk down to the river level. At the far eastern end of River Street is The Waving Girl statue that commemorates Florence Martus who greeted ships as the came up the Savannah River.

Back up above the river on the western side of River Street is the City Market area, which again is a very, very touristy section of the city.

The nice part about Savannah was that the tourist areas seemed to be clustered at and near the river. The farther south you walked, the less touristy the neighborhoods. Start heading south on Bull Street below Forsyth Park and you will see all sorts of local activity. We ate dinner one night at Starland Yard, which features a rotating selection of food trucks – the place was rocking.

Beyond the squares, River Street, and City Market, Savannah has a buildings that are worth checking out – you just need to decide which buildings to tour. There’s the Mercer William’s House, made famous as the scene of the crime in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, there’s the Owens-Thomas House, which I toured, and is affiliated with the Telfair Academy and thus paid entrance here gets you access to the other Telfair sites, there’s the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist (Savannah founder James Ogelthorpe banned Catholicism because Georgia was created as a buffer state against Catholic Spanish expansion from Florida…so much for that), and there’s Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home, among many, many other homes that are available to the public to be toured.

Mercer Williams House

Flannery O'Connor's Childhood Home

Owens-Thomas House

St. John the Baptist

Those awesome homes don’t include the other awesome homes that aren’t available to the public like the Gingerbread House or this mansion off Forsyth Park that belongs to a local hotelier.

Broughton Street is the main shopping thoroughfare with all the major chains a few boutiques. Leopold’s is the local ice cream institution but with a line half way down the block (and that was with no social distancing) this was unfortunately a skipped item on our itinerary.

We had the best meal of our trip as takeout from The Olde Pink House. The best thing we ate all trip was an appetizer called “Southern Sushi” which was smoked shrimp & grits rolled in coconut crusted nori. Our entries were the pork tenderloin and scored flounder. It’s also worth grabbing a meal at the other end of the spectrum, something quick from Parker’s, the local convenience store which has an “upscale” store on Drayton Street that’s open 24 hours.

Between all this I walked, and walked, and walked, through square, after square, after square. I need to fly back to Savannah in the fall so that there could be more café hopping and more beer hopping incorporated into these walks. As it was I only managed to grab a drink at The Original Pinkie Masters, a bar frequented by Jimmy Carter, which shows a completely different side to the button-upped and demurred Carter, and The Pirate’s House, one of Savannah’s oldest bars but doesn’t retain much, if any, of that antiquity.

As for the squares? I took so many photos of the squares that I built an entire page dedicated to touring the squares. A few highlights:

Bonaventure Cemetery is one of Savannah’s top attractions. We drove through the cemetery on the way from Tybee Island and I’m glad we took this approach rather than taking a guided tour through the cemetery. The cemetery is beautiful but it is a cemetery. Fifteen minutes and you’ve seen it all. The cemetery’s signature feature are it’s live oak trees with Spanish Moss draping from its branches – it’s both beautiful and creepy. The grave site that everyone is hunting for belongs to Little Gracie Watson which has a statue of the daughter of a hotel owner who died at the age of six. I thought there’d be more background to the story, like she haunted a hotel or something but that was it. She was a nice girl who greeted hotel guests and unfortunately died at a very young age. To find the grave site just type “Little Gracie Watson” into Google maps.

So, what’s not in Bonaventure Cemetery? That would be the famous Bird Girl Statue on the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It’s been relocated from the cemetery to the Telfair Academy.

The Wormsloe Historic site has an $18 entrance fee, which is required to be paid before taking a photo of the tree lined street, we balked at the $18 entrance fee. I got a similar photo at Boone Plantation later in the trip.

We had our best dining experience at The Wyld, a dock-side dining experience off Country Club Creek. Cool spot. We drove but the entire time I was imagining how cool it would be to pull up to the restaurant in a boat as a few others did. Simple menu, with interesting, fresh appetizers and taco type entrees, nothing above $20 – we ordered as much as we could and it was all good. We could have spent all day here but Savannah was calling.