Savannah visit

Since I started teaching math in mid January taking trips has not been easy. Spring break though is here and we took full advantage of it. We decided to visit Savannah and Charleston. We always wanted to go to Savannah because of its history but also because of the movie “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” which portrayed Savannah as an intriguing town. We didn’t want to spend the full week in Savannah so we decided to visit Charleston also which is a couple of hours away.

Having watched the movie, I was expecting Savannah to be a quiet mostly residential town with a lot of historic buildings and mansions. The reality was very different than that. The town was anything but quiet. It was overwhelmed with large crowds of tourists even though it was just late March. The historic district is heavily commercialized with stores at every building catering to the tourists and as a result diluting the character of the town. I could also not discern a consistent architecture in the town which I expected based on my visits in other historic districts of cities (especially in Europe) that are typically relatively homogeneous.  The only consistent theme in Savannah’s historic district was the inconsistency of the buildings. I don’t know if this is because from what I heard there was a period of decline in the center of town during which a lot of buildings were demolished until the local historical society started the effort to revitalize the town or because there was never a consistency in the way buildings were designed. There are some sections that are interesting but they are small patches.

The only real consistency of architecture in town was the vegetation and the large number of squares that seem to be everywhere. You literally can’t walk for more than a couple of blocks without running into a square. There are around 22 squares in town. Each of them is covered by beautiful centuries old live oak trees with Spanish mosh hanging from them (which by the way from what I learned is neither Spanish nor a mosh). If you are looking for the unique thing that ties the town together, it is these squares with the vegetation. All the squares looked pretty similar and I had a hard time telling them apart. I felt a little bit better when I heard some locals making similar statements of not being able to tell the squares apart despite living there for many years. The most famous of the squares is the Forsyth Park with its famous fountain. Each of the squares had something unique in the center of it (typically a statute) but I couldn’t correlate that with the name of the squares and eventually they all blended together in my brain.

One area that I did enjoy was the water front. There seemed to be relative consistency to the buildings there (we were told that a lot of the buildings were used for warehousing cotton and other agricultural products). We did enjoy a stroll up and down the side of the river. It was a bit overly commercialized and crowded but still enjoyable. One interesting characteristic was that the waterfront is at a lower level relative to the rest of the town and getting to it required taking a set of stairs at one of a few different locations.

The other part of town we really enjoyed was the east part of the Victorian district next to Forsyth Park. This was pretty close to where we stayed and the area had a real character with a lot of beautiful houses mostly old Victorians which was much closer to what I imagined Savannah would look like. We decided to stay there because we wanted to stay at a bed & breakfast rather than a hotel but it had the unexpected added benefit that we were a bit away from the crowds and in a beautiful area while only a ten minute walk from the action. We do enjoy walking so it wasn’t much of an issue for us. We stayed at the Amethyst Garden Inn. The building (built in 1888) was beautiful (especially the inside) and well decorated but the rooms were overpriced in my opinion like most things in Savannah.

We did several of the tours available. We did the hop on hop off tour first which helped us get a sense for the town. Looking back, I’d say it was not particularly important because everything is pretty close and we were able to easily walk to all the places the trolley took us to. The narration that was part of the tour was helpful but you can pick up a lot of the stories by going on the Web. We did one of the ghost tours. It provided a bit of a historical context for the town. I didn’t find the “ghost” part of the tour particularly interesting. We also did a tour at the Bonaventure cemetery. It was relatively interesting again mostly because of the historical facts we picked up from the narration.

There are a lot of interesting places for food. We did want to try the Southern cuisine and there were a lot of good choices. Unfortunately, reservations well in advance were required for the better restaurants due to the crowds. Many restaurants did reserve some table for walk ins although wait was typically required. We went for dinner relatively early which made things slightly easier. My favorite southern dish is shrimp and grits and I tried it at several restaurants. Our favorite version was at the Public Kitchen & Pub. We ended up eating at the bar since we didn’t have a reservation but it was an interesting experience. The bartenders were colorful characters and we ended up connecting with the other patrons seating around us which seem pretty typical for a Southern town. The food we had there was incredible.

Another restaurant we tried was Belford’s at the City Market (by the way the City Market is very small and overhyped in my opinion). We ate outside and the environment was very enjoyable. The food was pretty good but overpriced.

One of the interesting locations outside of Savannah is the Tybee Island. It seems to be where many people in Georgia go to the beach. We went there late March and the beach was already pretty crowded. The beach is ok. The water was a bit too muddy for my taste (especially when comparing it to the beaches in Greece) and the sand not particularly attractive. I’d say I probably even prefer the beaches in NJ. Parking was an issue even this early in the season and expensive since the town charges $4/hour. Another unfortunate thing for us was that we were there on a Tuesday. It seems like the decent restaurants are closed on Tuesdays. We ended up having to drive back to Savannah for a decent meal.

A couple of other useful tidbits:

• SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) is everywhere and is a major influence. SCAD has 15,000 students in a city of 140,000. SCAD has restored many buildings in town so you can see the SCAD acronym throughout the town is some of the most beautiful buildings.
• You have to be prepared for the mosquitos. Even though our visit was in late March I managed to get more than a dozen of mosquito bites on my arms before I wised up and got a bug spray. I do seem to attract mosquitos in general so this may not be a big issue for others. I found out after the fact that mosquito season is March through October for this region. After further research, it is possible that I was beaten by small flies that are pretty common in the area. It was pretty annoying either way and it took several days for the bitemarks to disappear.