Updated Edition!! We've converted our three-month blog about Savannah into an exclusive e-book. For 91 Days in Savannah contains all of our articles and 195 of our best pictures, in full-color. With categorical and alphabetical indexes, locations, links to the original blog posts, and cross-references spread throughout, the e-book is a perfect companion for a trip to Savannah.
Five years is usually considered to be a long time, but that's not necessarily the case in Savannah. We returned to find the city largely as we had left it. Sure, there were some new restaurants, and a few additional museums to check out ... whether they were new or had re-opened after renovation. But Savannah itself hadn't changed at all. And we like it that way. Here are some final images from our return to this beautiful and utterly unique southern city.
The Central of Georgia Railway company was founded in 1833, connecting Savannah to Macon and Southeast America's budding train network. The company's Savannah headquarters were closed in 1963, and today the grounds have found a new life as home to the Georgia State Railroad Museum.
Built in 1896 and recently restored to its original beauty, the King-Tisdell Cottage allows visitors to check out the interior of a classic Savannah home, and learn more about the rich heritage of the city's black population.
Say you've got a lady companion on your arm. She's a fine lady, dainty and demure, and you wish to take a romantic stroll along the river, and perhaps even muster the courage to steal a furtive kiss on the cheek. Good sir, stay away from River Street! Now, on the other hand, if your lady is a party animal, partial to the occasional belch, and already a drunken mess at 3pm, then head on down. You guys are going to have a blast. And I bet you get more than a kiss on the cheek.
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.
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.
Orleans Square, on Barnard Street, might as well be called Parking Lot Square. It's one of the spaces which has been most negatively impacted by the development boom of the mid-20th century.
Laid out in 1841, Crawford is the only of Savannah's squares with recreational equipment: a basketball court, won by the neighborhood after a 1946 tournament. Found on Houston Street, the square was named after native son William Harris Crawford, who was Secretary of the Treasury and who unsuccessfully ran for President in 1824.
After Johnson, Savannah's second square was laid out in 1733 and named after the Irish politician John Percival, who was involved in the founding of Georgia. Later, however, Percival Square was renamed in honor of Georgia's last royal governor James Wright.
In Savannah, every time you step out of the house, you're going to see something strange and beautiful. In the right frame of mind, the entire city becomes an art gallery... and whether your preferred form of art is architecture, graffiti, fashion or performance art, you're bound to see something you like.