Anecdotes and advice from three months living in the city
Located on Calhoun Square, the Massie School opened its doors in 1856, and was the first public school in Georgia. Today, it's been converted into the Massie Heritage Center, featuring an overview of Savannah's unique urban planning, and exhibits dedicated to the most important aspects of the city's culture, from architecture to the Native American influence.
Sorry, Paula Deen, but Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room is Savannah's most famous dining establishment, with a history that stretches back to 1943. That's when young Sema Wilkes bought a boarding house at 107 West Jones Street and began serving family-style meals to her clients. Her reputation grew quickly, and soon enough, people were lining up outside the door to get a taste of her famous home cooking.
Five years had passed, and we thought it would be a good time to return to Savannah. We wouldn't be staying for 91 days, this time, but just a couple weeks. We figured that should be long enough to visit our favorite spots, eat at some new restaurants and check out a few things we had missed the first time around.
This might be a city which moves slow, but our three months here flew by at a breakneck pace. Savannah had been a friendly, wild and unforgettable place to temporarily call home, and we couldn't have hoped to have chosen a better city.
At the top of Abercorn Street is Reynolds Square, originally laid out in 1734 as Lower New Square, but renamed in honor of the Royal Governor John Reynolds.
We've said it before, and we'll repeat ourselves again: Savannah is a photographer's dream. Whether you're looking for images that are beautiful, amusing, haunting or just plain weird, you hardly have to try. Just lift your camera, click the shutter, and you're almost guaranteed to have a compelling shot. We took tens of thousands of photographs during our three months in the city... here are a few of the better ones.
Before moving to Savannah, we didn't know much about the city. And although we weren't expecting to find a Victorian-era scenario, with Southern belles strolling the streets and coquettishly dropping their handkerchiefs to attract the attention of menfolk, we also weren't prepared to find the streets dominated by pink-haired girls and hipsters with ironic mustaches. In other words: we had no idea about the existence of SCAD.
One of the first things Jürgen did when we got to Savannah was type "German Restaurant" into Google. The nearest place bore the tongue-twisty name of Schnitzel Shack, and was a half-hour away in a town called Rincon (rhymes with Lincoln).
Madison Square, on Bull Street between Chippewa and Monterey Square, is possibly the most monumental in Savannah. With a magnificent tribute to William Jasper as its centerpiece, Madison offers a wealth of things to see and do.
Less heralded than Bonaventure Cemetery on Whitemarsh Island, but nearly as beautiful and free from almost any tourist presence, the twin cemeteries of Laurel Grove North and Laurel Grove South are nice places to spend a quiet afternoon among the dead.
Alright, we did it. We went to Club One, to watch the Lady Chablis do her thing. The show was too expensive and the lip-syncing performers were of varying quality. But the Lady was fabulous.
About half-an-hour north of Beaufort, there's a place in the woods which has become one of the low country's favorite secrets. The ruins of the Old Sheldon Church are found down a tiny road, in a forest of towering oaks draped in Spanish moss.