Weekend Getaway: Savannah, Georgia
The Southern city makes for a beautiful and leisurely long weekend.
Welcome to the weekend!
We’re drawn to cities with a real sense of place, which is something that the port city of Savannah, Georgia has in spades. Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia and it’s filled with squares (little parks with statues, benches, fountains, and trees dripping with Spanish moss) that provide a shady respite as you wander around. There’s beautiful architecture and historic homes (we recommend visiting the Mercer Williams House Museum, a former residence made famous in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt's book about the city, here called “The Book”). We also suggest a visit to the haunting Bonaventure Cemetery. But this is American Weekender, so we are primarily going to Savannah to eat — biscuits and cheesy grits for breakfast, fresh-caught seafood for lunch, and fried chicken and oysters for dinner (and of course, we’re going to get some drinks as well). Today’s Weekend Getaway newsletter will share all our top picks in town.
When you’re ready to plan your trip, be sure to download our Field Guide to Savannah, a 41-page downloadable PDF that organizes all our 20+ recommendations into a three-day itinerary with picks for coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks. It’s free for paid subscribers — find your special discount code below the paywall — but also available for $10 on our website.
Our paid subscribers receive other perks as well — access to our Google Map (which has 800+ locations mapped out!), free downloads of our full library of Field Guides, and access to our chat, which you can use to get travel tips and advice from us and other like-minded travelers.
Before we head out for the weekend, we’ve put together a Weekend Reading list featuring Midwest lake vacation spots, a trip to Nacogdoches, Texas, and a visit to the Outer Banks in North Carolina.
Thanks for reading!
— Amy Cavanaugh & Kenney Marlatt
Southern Soul
SAVANNAH, GA. — Savannah is a city with character. Much of the downtown is dominated by Savannah College of Art and Design, and the feel is notably less buttoned-up than Charleston, South Carolina, which is two hours north — Savannah is much more in the vein of New Orleans. Savannah’s sense of casualness extends to the restaurants as well — while there are some very nice spots to eat (obviously we’re going to Mashama Bailey’s two-time James Beard Award-winning restaurant, The Grey), most of our picks are more relaxed. We’ll visit casual walk-up windows for fried fish sandwiches, sip beers in dive bars, and eat burgers in honky tonks (though we’ll go get some nice cocktails, too). If you stay downtown, we recommend The Ann, a new Marriott hotel that features apartment-style rooms with your own in-unit laundry, a well-equipped kitchen, and access to a pool. That will put you in walking distance to many of our picks. We’ll also be spending a lot of time in the Starland District, the city's hot new restaurant neighborhood located 10 minutes from downtown, but it’s very easy to take a ride-share around. Let’s go explore, starting with a breakfast old fashioned.
