I have been dreaming of spending a couple of days in Savannah ever since I first saw this beautiful Georgian port city on TV as a child. The first time I heard of Savannah was when a soap opera about three women aired on Hungarian TV. The programme was about Savannah, the oldest town in Georgia, following the women’s lives through intrigue, love triangles and murder investigations!
Seeing the huge oak trees, wide streets and Spanish moss hanging off the tree branches made me want to come here ever since I first saw the series on my grandmother’s TV as a 13 year old child!
Here, in Savannah every street is lined with majestic oak trees and there are pretty little squares on nearly every corner! In fact, there are 22 of these squares, with a statue or memorial at the center of each.
How to Get to Savannah
I flew to Atlanta to attend the World Poultry Congress and then drove down to Savannah afterwards. The drive to Savannah took a little under four hours with a stop at the Jarrell Plantation.
There are plenty of direct flights to Atlanta from Europe but you can also fly to Charleston in South Carolina which is much closer.
Another option is to fly to Orlando, spend a few days there at the theme parks then take two or three days to visit Savannah. Driving to Savannah from Orlando takes only about four hours on the I-95 up north, so you might want to consider it.
Interpretive Signs in Savannah
The best bit is that there are interpretive signs in every square and street corner, explaining the significance of nearly all the structures.
The main historic district of Savannah is about 2.2 square miles in size, so easily walkable, but there are also ample opportunities to see it by tour bus or by bicycle.
I was fortunate to receive a free pass from the local tourist office that enabled me to hop on the tour bus and see the city of Savannah that way. I would definitely recommend first seeing Savannah this way, because the bus drivers are very knowledgeable and you can pick locations that you can later revisit on foot.
Savannah is not a very huge city, so you can easily walk anywhere. And if your hotel is within the historic district then you will never be further than a mile away from any of the major sites.
Factors Walk in Savannah
My favourite parts of Savannah were the historic squares, the wide open boulevards and the Factors Walk, as well as the riverside district. It was fascinating to see those huge container shipping vessels come and go up and down the river, easily navigating past each other and making hardly any noise in the process!
What was also pretty cool were the small, narrow bridges connecting the ancient warehouses to the street level on the town side.
Imagine this: the front of the warehouse with its fancy offices faces the beautiful park with a bridge connecting it to the pavement on the third or fourth floors. At the same time, on the other side of the building is the river and the riverbank, several stories below the street level on the other side!
Savannah was founded in 1733 by James Edward Oglethrope a British statesman who developed Georgia into the 13th Colony in North America. Oglethorpe named Georgia after King George of England and laid out Savannah on the coast following a strict layout to make it clean and tidy.
During the centuries, the leaders of Savannah maintained this mentality and created one of the most beautiful places in the entire United States of America!
Property Development Plans
Unfortunately, as with any city around the world, there was a period in Savannah when architects felt it would be best to destroy the historic and replace it with the new and modern!
So, in the process they demolished a number of historic places to use the bricks in suburban developments! Luckily, there were a bunch of women in the 1960s who stood up against rampant property development to preserve Savannah for posterity!
You can find out about this in more detail if you visit the historic homes in Savannah. I would recommend visiting the Davenport House Museum first where the tour guides will explain how the seven ladies set out to save the city.
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In a nutshell: Davenport house was scheduled for destruction but the ladies organized a sit in and ended up buying the place! It was the first house they saved and from thereon they set out to buy many more.
And with that they basically started a preservation society that today can claim to have saved the entire city of Savannah for posterity.
Historic Homes in Savannah
Thanks to their interventions, Savannah is now home to one of the largest collections of homes on the US National Register of Buildings and we can all enjoy taking in the sights!
My second stop was the Telfair Museum’s Owens-Thomas House just round the corner.
This house is even grander than the Davenport House and for good reason: the former owner was one of the richest people in Savannah at the time of construction in the early 19th century.
The Owen-Thomas House was one of the most modern buildings at the time with plumbing, several bathrooms even on the upper floor, a kitchen that would look modern even today and a huge staircase with a bridge!
As everyone else at the time, the owners of the house were also slave owners and you can visit the slave quarters at the back of the building at the start of the tours.
The Slave Era in Savannah
It was interesting to learn about Savannah’s slave era history which ended with the Civil War in 1865.
Basically, Oglethorpe originally banned slavery but slowly it creeped in from the north where South Carolina land owners could operate at a lower cost thanks to their slaves. So, by the 1750s it was legalised to own slaves and large scale importation to the port began in earnest.
Generally, the larger households owned about 5-10 slaves and their lives were relatively better than those who lived on the plantations.
I found it shocking that they treated the slaves like farmers treat animals today: the healthier and stronger the males the more they were worth. Just like bulls today in the livestock industry!
The women had their own value too: if they were healthy and of child bearing age they were used to produce off-spring which the owners could sell on later and make a profit!
I thought this was quite awful and to read about it in a matter-of-fact way probably made it even more chilling.
I sort of understand now why black Americans today feel so much resentment against white Americans – even more so that many of the former slave owner whites STILL live in huge villas in Savannah and around Georgia!
On my way to Savannah I stopped off at the Jarrell Plantation which was an original slave owning plantation. The property has been in the ownership of the same family for nearly two centuries and the descendents of the original owners still live on top of the hill in a big Antebellum style villa!
It felt very strange that there was no restitution or any compensation paid to the slaves – they were basically told to leave and “be free”! True, some of them were employed on the same plantations for a wage, but many decided to leave for the north to work in factories.
40 Acres and a Mule
I also learned that there was a plan to give the former slaves 40 acres of land after emancipation but following the murder of Lincoln this plan was shelved…forever.
This would have been carried out by confiscating part or all of the land from the plantation owners and splitting it up between the slaves.
Of course, the land owner lobby was up in arms and the new President, Andrew Johnson bowed under pressure and scrapped it.
I don’t think it would have been a great idea to confiscate private land – but I am sure there would have been plenty of other areas in North America where they could have resettled the former slaves. Instead of inviting in throngs of Europeans to take the “Wild West” they could have given land to the former slaves there.
Confiscation is never a good way to deal with injustices: my grandparents lost everything when the communists confiscated their land and my great grandparents were deported during the “population exchanges” of the 1940s. This was clearly not the right way to deal with poverty in Hungary and to give land to the poor.
But in the US they had millions of acres just lying around, so I am pretty sure they could have lifted the blacks out of poverty had they wanted to do it.
While in Savannah I also visited the Maritime Museum which was quite an interesting place showcasing the history of sea transportation in Georgia.
Dinner at Vinnie Van Go-Go’s Pizza
I had dinner at Vinnie Van Go-Go’s Pizza restaurant which gained notoriety recently when a waitress bodyslammed a patron that touched her up inappropriately!
Aside this, the pizza was amazing and I had two slices that completely filled me up!
Leopold’s Ice Cream Shop
I had a couple vouchers for Leopold’s Ice Cream shop where I went to get some banana ice cream on Friday evening. The queues were enormous, snaking all the way to the corner, but it was worth it as the ice cream was really tasty!
Other Sights in Savannah, Georgia
There are so many things to see in Savannah that unfortunately I did not have enough time to get to everything on my list. In fact, I think even a week would be too short to check everything out!
Anyhow, here is a list of things I would recommend doing while in Savannah:
Harper Fowlkes House – Alida Harper left her home to the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Georgia to be used as state headquarters. She wanted future generations to see the lifestyle of the mid 1800’s. Her will stipulated that the house is to be properly maintained and can never be sold.
Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace – this is where she made the famous phone call that marked the beginning of Girl Scouts in 1912. She proclaimed: “I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we’re going to start tonight!”
Massie Heritage Center – Peter Massie, who died in 1841, left $5000 for the establishment of a school for the poor in Savannah. The Massie School operated as a public school until its closing in 1974, and is Georgia’s oldest school in continuous operation.
Georgia State Railroad Museum – My big heartache is that I never managed to visit the Railroad Museum as I ran out of time! Shockingly, they closed the railway station here in 1974 and there is now no passenger service here!
I have seen pictures of the original railway station but it’s now gone, all that remains is the roundhouse where you can check out some ancient railroad cars and engines.
Walking Around Savannah
As I was walking around the many pretty streets and stopped to admire the buildings in the squares, I could not help but wonder what it might be like to live here as a local!
The trees, flowers and shrubs smelled amazing and as I walked around at night I could see the bright moon shine over the tree branches, illuminating the fountains in Forsyth Park.
What surprised me most was that I was almost alone in the streets after sunset, which baffled me as they looked even more charming after sunset than before!
The receptionist at the hotel even told me to be very careful after dark and that I should keep to the well-lit streets! I thought this was odd given that Savannah is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to in the US!
Of course, I did not listen to her advice and went walking towards the exact direction she recommended against and guess what? Nothing had happened to me walking around there!
In fact, I spotted some doors with the key left in the door from the outside!
It was amazing to see the almost full moon among the tree branches covered in moss and to smell the grass and moist tree bark in the dark.
In the end I spent about an hour or two walking in the dark both nights and went to bed around 1030PM totally exhausted!
Staying at the TRYP by Windham
The bed at the TRYP by Windham was so comfortable I unfortunately slept in both mornings!
On my second day I had breakfast at the Collins Quarters which is a fancy cafe owned by a Hungarian! In Savannah everyone thinks he is from Australia but looking at his name I could tell straight away he is Hungarian.
The owner is Anthony Debreceny, and his second name is actually after the second largest city in current Hungary. I live about two hours from Debrecen in the south of Hungary so I made sure to get breakfast at Collins Quarters.
I bought their special avocado sandwich with a fried egg on top plus a glass of water – I walked in with my cup of coffee from the hotel and the lady sitting next to me though I was crazy! I told her I was just Hungarian!
The Hungarian Cafe Owner
Anyhow, I asked the waiter to find Anthony for me if he was around and we took a selfie together that morning! It turns out he’s only been to Hungary once during a backpacking holiday about 15 years ago!
It was his grandparents that moved to Australia after the war and he doesn’t speak any Hungarian unfortunately.
That didn’t stop me from asking him to say hello to my followers in Hungarian, a term which I taught him on the spot!
The Waving Girl in Savannah
After breakfast I went for a river cruise on the free Savannah Ferry Service that takes you from the Town Hall to the Congress Center and then to the Waving Girl. This gives you the perfect opportunity to snap a few pictures of the old port of Savannah and check out the story of the Waving Girl.
The urban gossip is that she had a “good time” with one of the sailors and every day she would stand on the riverside waving at all the ships in the hope that she would see him again!
Walking to the statue I actually met a photographer who was taking pictures of the ships using his drone and he gave me the below picture as a gift. His name is William Harrell and he is a photographer in Savannah – you can buy his photos here.
From here I had to hop in my car and head out to Atlanta as my flight was later that day at 9PM.
Wormsloe State Historic Site
What I did is drive to the Wormsloe State Historic Site just outside Savannah to check out another slave owning estate and the nature reserve, then drove to the nearby the Pin Point Heritage Museum.
The Wormsloe State Historic Site is famous for the long drive way that leads from the main entrance to the ruins of the old stately home. This is where most tourists take selfies during summer when purple flowers hang off the trees and every leaf is dark green.
The park here looked fascinating with palm and pine trees next to the marsh where the locals used to pick oysters for dinner and sale.
You can learn much more about oyster catching at the nearby Pin Point Museum so I won’t go into much detail here but apparently the oysters here are the best!
Again, shockingly the former slave owners’ descendents still live on the estate and they own about 80 acres of land! As a twist of history, the 8th generation of the family are lawyers – yet lawyers were originally not allowed into the state of Georgia!
Lawyers were in fact banned from Georgia between 1733-1755 along with alcohol, Catholics and slaves! The Historic Savannah website says that:
Georgia was to be “free from that pest and scourge of mankind called lawyers.”
Unfortunately this changed in 1755 when lawyers were allowed in and slavery was legalized!
I had lunch at the local Bojangles and put the pedal to the metal as it was a nearly four hour drive to Atlanta! In the end I did not have time to refuel and I was late to return the car but I would say it was definitely worth it as Savannah is such a beautiful place!
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Kathy@DavesTravelCorner says
Ohh! I love this place. My partner and I would love to visit Savannah someday.
solaristraveller says
It was amazing there, make sure to visit one day! 🙂