Sweet & Spooky Savannah

Most cities around the country where folks reside have their close-in-proximity cool location to visit, right? Maybe you're three hours from a beach so you get to dip your toes in the sand pretty often. Or, you're two hours from Niagara Falls and practically hear the roar of the water from your back porch. Or you're a stone's throw to D.C. and can almost see the tip of the Lincoln Memorial if you squint hard enough.  

Some folks are close to little towns and cool places that aren't as widely known but they're great little getaways that are ideal to those in a decent driving radius. For us in Atlanta, one very popular destination I love that is relatively close is Savannah, GA. If you saw the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, you've already seen a bit of the 250-year old streets and Spanish-moss draped trees among the nice different squares sprinkled around the historic district.

Savannah is one of the oldest cities in the U.S., being situated along a river in the 13th colony: big boom area back in the day thanks to shipping operations. It has cemeteries dating back to the 1700s that you can stroll through today, with headstone's so old and weathered that you can barely read the etched words. The street along the river is original cobblestone, hard to walk on because it's so uneven but it's so cool, and I am mesmerized just strolling along, wondering about all the other feet that touched the same stone 50, 100, 200 years ago and more.

The hub and I went to Savannah for a weekend trip earlier this month with three other couples and had a blast. We stayed at the Sheraton in the historic district, and spent each day strolling, eating, drinking, shopping and laughing. Since Savannah considers itself the most haunted city in the U.S. (New Orleans would disagree), we simply had to venture onto a Haunted Pub Crawl. Of course, the pub part wasn't entirely necessary but if you're going to stroll around the haunted streets of an old city after dark, what better way than to intersperse a bar here and there along the way? We thought it would certainly add to the enjoyment because many bars are housed in old, old buildings that MUST be inhabited by creatures not entirely human.

Unfortunately, this particular Haunted Pub Crawl was a bust. The guide was uncomfortable, occasionally offensive, and took such long pauses in his story-telling, my anxiety skyrocketed because I felt like he had forgotten the story, and the discomfort of the group waiting to see if he'd pick it back up was palpable. Oh, those pubs that sounded like a good idea? We didn't venture into a one. Not one pub in a Haunted Pub Crawl.  After 70 minutes of the 120 minute tour, we vanished like the ghosts we thought we'd be hearing more about.

We weren't deterred in having fun, however, and spent another awesome day in and around the city. The next night, still feeling like we needed a pub-fix as well as to hear some of the cooler things about Savannah and the comings and goings of the past 300 years, we signed up for one of the coolest things we did that weekend: the Savannah Slow Ride. It's a 15-person bicycle that looks like you're bellied up to a bar except that each seat has pedals and inside the center is where the driver sits who merely steers, brakes when necessary, and motivated us to get to pedaling when it was time to move. His colorful encouragement for getting us pumping the pedals? "Pedal, bitches!"

For two hours, we pedaled and laughed our way among the streets and squares of Savannah, visiting pubs we never would have tried otherwise and hearing stories that were fantastic and memorable. We had a blast.

While we were in Savannah, Paramount Pictures was filming the Spongebob Movie. Part real life and part animated, we saw where they had put up fake store fronts along one of Savannah's best streets of shops. These stores bore clever names of stores befitting an underwater sea town that is called Salty Shoals. There was the Sand Barber, The Seashore Everything Store (a Goodwill in real life), Seashell Shake (aka Smoothie King), and the Barnacle Bun, among others. That was merely a bonus to an already fabulous town.

If you haven't ever been but find yourself in the Land of Cotton, it's worth the visit.