Part 1 here.
I’d never been to Savannah, even though it’s not terribly far from where I grew up. As a native South Carolinian, I’m going to admit a little secret: we looked down on Georgia. In fact, when I told a friend of mine (who grew up in Charleston) I was going to Savannah, she said, incredulously, WHY?
Well, I’d heard it was pretty cool. Evidently The Book (that’s how they say it in Savannah) helped things a bit too—that’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. That book brought tourists in, by the busload. And the city has grown and prospered because of it. Also, Savannah is just plain beautiful, or at least it was in pictures, so I added it to the itinerary.
Everybody online said you have to stay in the historic district of Savannah, and if you do, you can walk everywhere, so I decided to splurge for a hotel there. We got a room for two nights at the 17hundred90 Inn. Supposedly the Inn is haunted, but the haunted room cost a bit extra so I decided to pass.
Anyway, we headed to Savannah from Macon. It naturally took longer than I’d expected (like most of the driving on this trip…I don’t know if it was the truck, or construction, or the heat, but everything took longer.) We got into town and were starving, so we stopped for lunch at the Collins Quarter. It was a perfect lunch.
We split two dishes, and this is one of them: Smashed Avocado Toast. Yes, we are pretend millennials, ruining the world with our avocado toast.
After lunch we went to check into the hotel. This was easy enough, but was a little bit of a THING. There was a whole bit with a guy named Grumpy who took us up to the room on the third floor, but wouldn’t let me carry any of the bags, which meant that Louie had to carry more because of it. In any case, we parked the truck behind the hotel and left it there until we departed several days later, which was really nice. The hotel only charged $10 extra for parking, and included free breakfast each morning (though not until 8:30 which meant one day we couldn’t do it.)
The hotel is full of antiques, and each room is unique. We were in the “annex” which was across the street from the main building. I though the hotel was great and would stay there again. One warning: there isn’t anybody on duty overnight! But we didn’t have any issues, and if you were staying in your own home or an airbnb you wouldn’t expect 24 hour service either.
After we checked in, we headed out to explore. Savannah is super walkable, and I didn’t realize until we started walking that it was even smaller than I’d realized. You really can just walk about anywhere in 10 minutes, maybe 15. (In the Historic District, that is.)
Savannah is laid out on a grid with this little “squares” every few blocks. Each square is really just a little park, and it means there is tons of shade and green space. It’s very cute!
Like any good old city, there are cemeteries. Savannah is really known for Bonaventure Cemetery, but we didn’t make it there—it’s outside of the historic district and we didn’t make it out of the area.
We walked along the River next, which is a bit more “trash touristy” if you know what I mean. We popped into a place Louie remembered going before and getting a bucket of cheap oysters, and decided to repeat his memory.
Like most memories, it wasn’t quite as good as he remembered, but we had fun trying to shuck the oysters and eating them!
We had dinner reservations at a restaurant called Husk, so at point we headed there. It was amazing! I loved the vibe, and the food was just delicious. It was southern food, but with a focus on fresh, local ingredients (not just deep fried and covered in gravy).
My shrimp and grits.
Louie’s fish dish. I forgot what it was, but he complimented the server on the cocoa krispies.
For dessert we split a frozen grasshopper. Yummy!
The next day we did a bunch of stuff (you read this blog for the quality, Edward Abbey-like writing, correct?) We started with a bike tour with Savannah Bike Tours. It ended up being a private tour with just Louie and I and the guide, a wonderful guy named Dee. He took us all over the historic district and gave us all kinds of great information.
It will not surprise you that I picked the purple bike.
Above: the actual house from Midnight (I think I’m right on this!).
Then we got an ice cream snack at Leopold’s and then went to visit the Owens-Thomas House, which Dee said was his favorite house tour. The ticket for the House also normally included two more museums, the Telfair Academy and the Jepson Center, but the Telfair Academy was closed for the week while we were there, so we got a slight discount. We took a guided tour (I believe that’s the only way to see the house) and learned about the people who lived in the house and the enslaved people who worked for those people.
I will just say: a lot of our trip involved learning about enslaved people, but more as a side note the important, historical rich white people. Well, they got rich because THEY OWNED OTHER PEOPLE AND THOUGHT THAT THIS WAS OKAY. In Charleston, we went to a former plantation tour which skimmed over the rich white people and really talked about the enslaved people (and yes, that’s the word you use today) and their descendants, and it felt so much better, like we weren’t pretending anymore. I am ashamed of the history of my country, and I think we need to really consider how to reconcile our history of using unpaid enslaved people as labor and then to never make that right, with our current issues with poverty and race relations. It’s a huge mess, and seeing these fancy beautiful houses is fun, but it just feels like a façade, covering up a very ugly history.
That being said (said poorly, but said), the house was pretty neat. It had some unique architectural features, such as a bridge on the second floor connecting two parts of the floor. My picture of that didn’t turn out well so I can’t share, but you can just go visit.
We went for lunch after that, to Soho South Café. I had a fried green tomato sandwich!
We visited the Jepson Center after that, and looked at art in an air-conditioned building for awhile.
We had dinner reservations at the Grey, but we ended up eating elsewhere. I got angry…I had a little bit of breakdown involving the fact that too many of their vegetable dishes had meat in them. I know it’s the south, but something about it just set me off. I think it was because they divided their menu into four categories, one of which was dirt, which supposedly meant veggies, but then 3 of the 5 had meat in them, and the other two were both rice based dishes, and I just couldn’t. It kind of ruined our evening, but that’s how things go sometime. We ate dinner at Garibaldi’s instead, which felt like eating on the Hill, and I think they had chicken broth in their mussels (which was super weird, frankly, and unnecessary) and the whole thing feels a little funny to write about.
We also stopped at a few random coffee shops: we had a mediocre breakfast at Blends Coffee, but fantastic cappucino and coffee. We had fine coffee at Savannah Coffee Roasters, though a bit acidic for me. And we had a lovely breakfast at our hotel the second morning, with coffee, juice, fruit, yogurt, and these fun egg things which I would love to have on hand for a daily breakfast.
And that’s Savannah! It was a great little city to visit, with marvelous architecture, squares, and good food.
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