I just finished a weekend in Savannah and surrounds, and while I don’t feel I know enough to make a definitive “Weekend in…” post on the city, I can make a few suggestions.
Savannah is the Boston of the South, very colonial and conservative, owing in no small part to Sherman delivering the city as a Christmas present to President Lincoln in lieu of burning it to the ground, as he did with most other Southern cities he visited. It was peak Enlightenment in terms of its city planning, pieced neat as a brick quilt around 24 open squares, most of which remain beautifully intact. You can walk the whole thing end to end in a half hour. Here are some gems I found tucked here and there:
- The Grey: Black-owned James Beard Award-winning restaurant in a refurbished Greyhound Bus Station. Everything was fantastic, and it was fun sitting at the bar and watching all the couples, of all ages, out for Friday date night.
- Mrs. Wilkes’s Dining Room: you’ll wait in line for 1.5 hours to eat there (unless you get there a half hour before opening), but it will be worth it! And you’ll get to know some cool people in line—like Miss Tamie, who lost her farm twice over (once to the Cedar River floods and once because of a fraudulent help broker) but is still traveling around on her own, even to Paris, and is making a new business plan to lease the organic farm she lost in Georgia and run a farmstay there.
- Harper Boutique. I love a good Southern boutique. It’s where you catch up on the latest styles and the latest gossip at the same time. And let me tell you, Southern ladies know a good print when they see one. I’ve never seen so many adorable sundresses in my life. Also Midge. There are a lot of good boutiques, actually.
- Origin Coffee Bar
- The Olde Pink House. Best she-crab soup I had on the whole trip.
- The Spread, Montreal-style bagels.
- The farmers’ market at Forsyth Park. Bonus Bernese Mountain Dog watching!
- I got some good advice from the South Carolinians on my food tour to watch the sunset over the river from a rooftop bar. I chose the one at the Bohemian Hotel, but there are a bunch of nice ones. It was fun gawking at the city-block-sized container ships leaving the Port of Savannah and watching dolphins hunt in the river (yep!)
- Tybee Island: tranquil early in the morning and really pretty. I love an East Coast Beach.
The other spot I can’t recommend highly enough is Pin Point Cultural Heritage Museum. Occupying the site of a former crab and oyster factory, it’s a monument to the incredible Gullah-Geechee settlement that grew up there after Emancipation. Gullah-Geechee folks started out as enslaved Africans, kidnapped from Guinea, Senegal, and elsewhere expressly for their expertise in rice growing, which was the primary plantation crop grown on the Barrier Islands from South Carolina to Florida. Left mostly alone on the islands by their owners due to the rough conditions out there—alligators, mosquitos, heat, and snakes, the Gullah-Geechee were able to develop and maintain a unique culture and the only intact Creole (a pidgin language passed on from parent to child) in continental North America. The guides at Pin Point are all Gullah-Geechee, and the experience there is absolutely priceless due to their knowledge and experience of the place. About a hundred of their kin still live out on Pin Point, and supporting the museum helps support their community and way of life. If you haven’t heard of the Gullah-Geechee at all before and want an introduction before you visit, I recommend watching (or reading) Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.
The Rookery 