Our Complete Guide to an Unforgettable Weekend in Savannah

Sure, Savannah’s full of Southern Charm, just don’t look too closely in the windows

I’m not sure what drew me to Savannah, but I know that when Peggy went on a girls’ trip to Savannah I was suddenly insanely jealous.  Which is weird for me, because I have a slight aversion to Georgia. 

Patti’s Georgia dramatics

Please, hear me out on this one, before I get bombarded with disparaging remarks from those over flowing with Georgia pride.  My father’s family is from Southern Georgia.  Growing up we vacationed there several times over the years to see the family.

My Granny and Granddaddy were wonderful people, and I have such fond memories of them.   Our GA family is rather large, and they are great people. But being painfully shy as a child, for me it meant the uncomfortableness of being around virtual strangers. It was feeling out of place, like I didn’t really belong, because they were all so close. I was an outsider even though they tried to include me. Anxiety and overwhelm is the feeling I associate with those visits.

The crowning moment happened on my very last trip to Georgia. My beloved Granny took her last breaths while my son and I stood there next to her bedside.  And that’s when I swore off Georgia. I was never going back there, EVER, bad things and bad feelings happen in Georgia.  Yes, I acknowledge my trauma, misplaced emotions, and flare for the dramatics, it’s one of my gifts.

Planning for Savannah’s Amazingness

Then an opportunity for a Sisbehaving trip presented itself, and Savannah was the destination.  We decided to fly into Atlanta and rent a car so we could visit Peggy’s brother from another mother and his wife, my Non-Asian, Asian Sister on a side trip.

The researching began (if you know us, you know we love the planning process!). And the planning of routes, and side trips, and bars, and restaurants, and activities caught me all up in the excitement of going to Savannah.

We had three full days, and knew day one was going to be hitting Savannah’s historic district for sight-seeing in downtown with bonus shopping and eating. Day two was for day drinking! And day three was sightseeing all the historic and “must-see” attractions in and around Savannah.

Day 1

Wormsloe Historic Site

We began the day with a drive out to Wormsloe Historic Site.  This is most recognizable to people as the Instagram spot with all the Live Oak trees with hanging moss that bridge over the road.  A one-mile drive in to the visitor’s center is just a long straight, gorgeous drive. It was peaceful with the overhead trees and nature surrounding us.

Unfortunately, it was cold and rainy, and most of the Wormsloe sites are outdoors.  We did hit up the visitor’s center and learned about the settlers and the history of the Wormsloe settlement.  It was interesting and informative. Being from Washington State, our historic sites are all about settlers on the Lewis and Clark trail.  Wormsloe was about the history of colonizers who first came to our country.

Settling into Savannah

Finally, time for brunch.  I had Funky Brunch stuck in my head as a winning spot. The tables have built in griddles so you can make your own pancakes, complete with different add-ins, if that’s your thing. But my thing is shrimp and grits.  Bright and colorful, and unique selections set us right for the day and we were ready to explore downtown.

Sister Side Note (ssn) – we are changing up our blog style a bit for this piece. We have so much to talk about that we will hit the sights in this one and cover food and day drinking in a separate one. Stay tuned…

We checked into Hotel Brice. The Brice was selected because it was a Kimpton (which we absolutely love), and it was right on the edge of the historic district.  We knew we wanted to be in the historic district, but not right in the middle of it. So the Brice was basically perfect. It was one block off the River on the corner of Bay street. Savannah has it’s own little river walk area, and we can’t miss a good river walk. 

ssn – The Brice was the perfect mix of eclectic funkiness that Kimpton is known for with southern charm. We loved this hotel!

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Let the Savannah Exploration Begin…

We pre-purchased a two day pass on the Savannah Hop On/Hop Off trolley.  If you are ever in a town that has a hop on-hop off option, do it.  It’s a great way to get around, hear some local history, see the big sites, and also can be used as a great local taxi service. Our first day was pouring rain, and not exactly what we were hoping for.

ssn – thank you to The Brice for lending us umbrellas (they do this at every location we’ve been to). We were not fully prepared for the weather.

So after having a warm-up drink at The Boar’s Head, we hit River Street.  It didn’t take long for us to realize it was too cold and rainy to wander. We found our first trolley stop and decided that the best way to get a feel for the city and see a little bit of everything was to take the full trolley route.

Trolleys run every 15 minutes and the drivers/guides are funny and engaging. Each one has a little different take to their story telling.  The tour provides insight to the arrival in Georgia of James Oglethorpe, Civil War era Savannah, stories about General Sherman, details about the historic homes and their owners (including The Mercer House from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil).

The full tour takes about an hour and a half. You are welcome to get off at any of the 14 stops along the way, tour museums, grab some food, and then jump back on at your convenience. 

Luckily, stop number 9 was right behind our hotel, and right in front of the Pirate’s House.  Not to ruin the suspense of the tour, The Pirates’ House is one of the oldest buildings in Georgia. And it’s haunted (as we find out most places in Savannah are). AND they used to kidnap drunken men, shove them into the basement and then shove them onto pirate ships as deckhands against their will.

Turns out most pirates were not pirates by choice. . .weird…I mean all that rum and all that booty. . .hmmm. 

Haunted Savannah

For our first evening, Peggy had booked us on The Creepy Crawly Tour. A pub crawl tour of the most haunted spots in Savannah. Now, there are many ghost tours in Savannah, being ranked the most haunted cities in America (even above Salem, MA). Some of them come in costume, some of them are kind of kitschy. There is a trolley one, and a limo one, and a hearse one. There is no shortage of options.

Creepy Crawly Haunted Pub Tour

Andre, our host, doesn’t do any of that gimmicky stuff. He is personable and animated, and was an amazing story teller. Amazing to the point I was too creeped out to sleep the first night. Then, I started self-talking myself into a freak out.

I am absolutely positive that if I looked in the windows of these creepy townhomes and Victorian houses, there would for sure be a ghost watching me. I mean, I am not the only one who is still haunted by the Flowers in the Attic cover page, am I? This is how you know you got a good guide on a ghost tour, when they make you afraid of what you MIGHT see, and not actually what you see.

ssn – Andre is amazing!! He has impressive credentials and really engaged our already lively group. He was our guide on my previous trip to Savannah so I knew we wanted to go on his tour again!

Andre took us to several older bars in Savannah and gave us some crazy historical facts that you would never hear from a regular old tour of the city.  Naturally, the tour doesn’t start until dark, 9 pm is usually my bed time, so what in the world am I doing starting my night off at this time?  The answer is most definitely: Pub Crawl.

This walking tour had most of us enthralled with the stories, and a little creeped out to be walking in the back of the pack, plus stopped at 4 bars along the way for refreshments.  I cannot recommend this tour enough; it was so much fun.

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Late Night Dessert

 At 11 we had to hustle off for our pre-planned, 11:15 reservation at Better Than Sex, a dessert bar.  Geared towards romantic couples, the entire menu items are sexual innuendo named crafty cocktails and a full dessert menu.  It’s dark, romantic and not someplace you want to go with your sister.

But everything was amazing, the homemade caramel rimmed glasses, the blueberry stuffed French toast.  They really did this theme up to an amazing level.  They have other locations in Key West, Orlando, and Plano (and just found out, LA opens this weekend – March 2021).  Definitely worth checking out for a date night. But wait, I’m not supposed to focus on food and drinking on this blog episode.

As we (unexpectedly?) drunkenly stumbled back to The Brice, this girl fell in love with the colorful side street homes and seashell encrusted sidewalks.  (Unexpectedly, as we didn’t intend for this to be a heavy drinking night and we didn’t expect to have to stumble, but Lyft was completely unreliable in this city, just plan to walk where ever you go).

ssn – she may have underexaggerated (which NEVER happens) about the sidewalks…she was obsessed…the whole walk home!

Day 2

Champagne Photo Shoot

Day two was a special event that I planned for us, much to Peggy’s initial horror. It was an AirBnB experience involving dressing up and doing a photoshoot.  Hey, they served champagne, it had to be fun. And it was so much fun.

The insanely cute Starland Strange and Bazaar was a combined ice cream shop and boutique. I am still kicking myself for not getting ice cream in a flavored waffle cone.  But the clothes and jewelry were completely adorable. And hallelujah, there was champagne with gummy bears to loosen us up.

We were styled and ended up dressed as the incredible pair of Slash and Stevie Nicks look-alikes, or at least extremely close in our opinions.  My sister was a trooper, and I appreciate her humor and willingness to do this.  It was so much fun, and the pictures were. . . .um, well, we have a couple of good ones to use in the future.

And we have amazing memories of laughing until we about peed our pantaloons.  Plus, this gave us an opportunity to see the outer lying neighborhoods of Savannah, pick out our new homes, and fall in love with the charm of this beautiful city.

ssn – seriously we had so much fun but I am not comfortable with photo shoots!! Awkward! Here is the link to the Airbnb experience, Champagne Shopping Photo Shoot – Starland. In addition to the very fun shop, Starland neighborhood is such a cool place, worthy of a Saturday morning stroll and something we would not have stumbled on without purpose.

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Finally – Day Drinking

After the rain the day before, the sunshine was welcome! Even if it wasn’t altogether warm, we opted for a walking tour of the city market and Victorian district for our day drinking extravaganza.  However, what we discovered is that the sunshine brought out all the people desperate for day drinking after the rain the day before. And the City market was packed.

ssn – we normally get an early start to brunch but because of our modeling escapades, we were close to noon and had a very difficult time finding availability. We really wanted to go to Treylor Park, just down from the hotel but the waits were so long and we were starving…something you don’t hear from models too often.

Oysters were first up, trying to find them charbroiled to satiate Peggy’s favorite indulgence from New Orleans.  Sorry Charlie’s had a great oyster bar and about 6 options for oysters. We finally got our hushpuppies, and headed up to the rooftop bar.

Thankfully, we secured a corner couch by the firepit on the rooftop with which to kickback, enjoy some sun, and judge the “woo-hoo” girls fresh from their Lululemon shopping sprees. Also, pretty sure the couple next to us was on a first or second date, they were definitely in the “get to know you” phase.

We decided to get on out of there, and hit the streets. Yes, cocktails are allowed on the street in Savannah’s Historic District.

And More Food Stops

Slight detour to try out the pork belly donuts at The Ordinary (#1 best food of the trip). We wandered up the road and had the fantastic luck to stumble upon the outdoor karaoke bar at The Rail.

The Rail is known for its dive bar feel, a former brothel founded in 1890. Now, this is typically our kind of vibe: outdoor day drinking; however, the addition of a drunken bachelorette party AND a drunken 21^st birthday bash, the karaoke quickly went downhill.  I mean, come on, let’s not do sappy country songs badly performed, nor scream Hank Jr. into a microphone and call it entertainment.

The second level outside was fantastic for people watching, but my need for a restroom when only a port-a-potty was available drove us to find a new location.

More stops, cocktails, carbs, and exploring new venues, we were shockingly ready for the hotel room rather early.  However, Savannah bars had great happy hours, great vibes, 50 cent oysters, and peach tea vodka at every stop.

Perfect end to our day

Crawling into bed early, we had the opportunity for gut wrenching laughter as the morning’s pictures were uploaded to our sisbehaving Google drive.  I seriously haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time.

Peggy’s poofy dress making her look pregnant, my bad crotch hugging pants, awkward hand holding and some of the looks and sideways glances longingly off into the distance made for an evening of entertainment without the necessity of wearing a bra.

ssn – because we love you, we are sharing this picture. I still can’t help but laugh at the awkwardness of it all. Where is Patti’s hand?? How am I pregnant?? Imagine our cackling at scrolling through 600 of these!!

Day 3

Bonaventure Cemetery

Our final day in Savannah was planned to see more historic sites in the area. Bonaventure Cemetery is known for being one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the country; with the old growth Live Oaks and Spanish Moss. It gained notoriety when the Bird Girl statue was photographed for the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil book cover. Bird Girl has since been moved to a museum (later in this post).

Georgia cemeteries range with headstones from 300 years ago, civil war era to current times, and many of them are big, ornate and meant for families to be buried in plots together.  It was intriguing to see the differences between the the giant marble crypts (OMG, why would you put windows in a crypt?????) of the clearly wealthy, and the small, modest grave stones.

There were the new bright marble vs the old weather worn stones that were barely legible with the passage of time. And yes, it was creepy.  Adhering to our new strict policy of DON’T LOOK THE WINDOWS and focusing on the stones and praying that we didn’t see any creepy figures in the distance, we stayed in the car with the windows rolled up (yes, even in broad daylight).  It was gorgeous, but I just wanted to get out of there!

And just looking at these pictures again is giving me the creeps, like something is for sure there in the shadows.

More Historic Sites

We got back to the historic district in time for the opening of Collins Quarter in Forsythe Park.  Saw the Insta-Famous Forsythe Fountain and the Civil War Memorial before scoring outdoor patio seating at Collins Quarter.

The lavender mocha and avocado toast were as good as all the reviews said, we were concerned that it may have merely been overhyped, but nope. This gave us a chance to plot out our day, which was perfect for utilizing our day two of the hop on/hop off bus.

Parking on Jones street and leaving the car seemed the most logical. Jones street is known for it’s beauty, because of the old, refurbished homes and tree lined streets.  It did not disappoint, and we were lucky enough to get parking on the block just up from St. John the Baptist Cathedral (spoiler alert, we skipped Sunday Mass).

We managed to stroll through several of the neighborhood squares (there are 22 of the original 24 squares still remaining), sought to find the original location of the Forrest Gump bench and failed (the bench is in the history museum, but there was supposed to be a plaque noting the original spot, we couldn’t find it).

Savannah is a very walkable city; it is just beautiful and I really encourage you to see most of it on foot to enjoy the scenery. 

ssn – coffee and wandering was one of my most favorite activities of the weekend. The gorgeous sun-shiny morning and the stunning architecture were everything I needed.

We popped into Mirabelle coffee house across from the Cathedral to get another mocha. While waiting, we had a laugh at the vain girls carrying on a conversation with each other while staring at themselves in the hallway mirror, and decided we needed real food.

Brunch Break

Thank the maker, The Grey was about to open and we hoped to get in without a reservation. We were unable to get one previously but hoped to if we got there right when they opened.  And we did!

The Grey is a really cool restaurant built in an old Greyhound bus station.  Themed as such, refurbished and yet left with a lot of the interior décor.  It was fantastic, Peggy discovered her new favorite drink, The Passionfruit Spritz. We shared crab beignet (yes, I said crab beignet) and a slice of pie, which seemed awfully fitting for this old timey diner feel The Grey has.  And it was just a few blocks from the beginning of the Hop On/Hop Off route. 

We grabbed the trolley, and learned some more historical facts about the area. The First African Baptist Church, the Sorrell Weed house, General Sherman’s quarters, and his annoyance with church bells to the point that he had them melted down to make new cannons just out of spite for the locals (kind of a dick move).

City Market

We rode the trolley around to the City Market, where we had experienced awful karaoke two days prior.  On a Sunday, however, it was much more subdued and I finally understood why people talk so much about this area.  It is a street four blocks long with bars, restaurants, and artworks in old restored warehouses.

Now, I’m going to side note here:  you are going to pass a Byrd’s Cookies in the City Market, and several other locations in Savannah. You are going to think you should pass it on by.  We did, I mean big deal, who needs a cookie shop when you have cocktails around?  Then on the drive back to Atlanta we picked up some of Byrd’s Peach Cookies at a gas station and discovered they were clearly made of crack.

They are freaking amazing, and we were very sad that we had bypassed this shop while in Savannah. STOP AT BYRD’S.

ssn – get the cookies….cannot recommend this enough. They seem harmless enough but then you find yourself wanting to pour that powered sugar out of bag and snort it off the coffee table. I was lucky enough to be in Charleston as I edit this blog and they have Byrd’s. I had one moment of weakness – can confirm other flavors are fabulous (mmm….cupcake, scotch oatmeal) but peach remains my favorite.

We stopped at Wet Willies, but determined we really weren’t up for frozen drinks and brain freeze, even in cute to-go cups (ToGo-sa!) and decided it was a great time to do the Prohibition museum.  Museum tickets were part of our Trolley package, so I would recommend packaging the trolley with other local site options.

Prohibition Museum

The Prohibition Museum was really well done.  Wax figures, Prohibition era signs, explanations of how it all went down, and how they convinced people alcohol was the downfall of civilization.  One of the things I thought was so cool was they made all their Covid applicable signs to blend with the exhibits, to look like they were from that period. 

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Telfair Academy & Bird Girl

Feeling rather museum-y at this point (yes, it’s a word), we made the decision to hit up the Telfair Academy Museum that houses the earlier mentioned Bird Girl statue.  I find the statue creepy af, but Peggy was dying to see it.  Luckily we stumbled upon a take-out street bar, The Grove. A drink along the way to help convince me to face the creepy girl of marble.

The Telfair Museum is a series of buildings, the Bird Girl is in the Telfair home that has been redone on the interior.  Maintaining several of the original rooms and the history of the times, coupled with three floors of gallery art work. There is a large pre-historic looking crocodil-a-sorous looking skeleton with oddly no identification plaque. I’m sure we talk about my fear of Prehistoric Amphibians/Shark/Megalodon eating me in our Key West Post. A great experience for learning more about Savannah and the civil war era, and easy to do in an hour. 

ssn – I do not find Bird Girl creepy at all!! I loved her! She’s just trying to keep the plates balanced like the rest of us Libras.

Smarter Sister Side Note: – She is totally creepy, she has no freaking eyes!!!! And on top of that, the sign specifically said she was NOT trying to balance (like weird Libras), she was originally supposed to be a fountain and the plates were for the water to spill over the top

Final evening in Savannah

We were now close to the car, so we drove the car back to the hotel, and grabbed the trolley again to finish out the portion of the trolley tour we had not yet experienced. They took us down to the riverfront and around bay street, seeing many old buildings, hearing architecture stories of the waterfront district, and finally finishing our full circle at our last stop. Ending our day by disembarking by The Perry Hotel where we had reserved a rooftop table at Peregrine for sunset. 

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Sunset was a disappointment that night, it was cold and windy. But there was a firepit, and great company in the form of fellow travelers and my sister. The Peregrine provided blankets, which was a nice touch.

We headed back to the hotel for our final night, remarking with wonder about the shells inset into the sidewalk concrete, and just deeply in love with this Southern city, completely ensnared by it’s charms.