So tell me what you discovered in Savannah. Well, it has
incredible history to it. And you feel that the moment you get
there, particularly in the downtown area. You know, it was sort of
where the old
Georgia colony was established. Everything today
that's downtown Savannah is sort of an offshoot of its design when
the first settlers started to colonize it. This guy, General James
Oglethorpe, designed it all, and there are all sorts of
Oglethorpian references - monuments, streets, Oglethorpe burgers. I
don't know if there's an Oglethorpe burger, but there's a lot of
that kind of imagery of this guy. He was the designer, the lead
guy, when they established the town. He created that thing where
they would start with a park and then build out from there. Today,
there are more than 20 of those parks all over the city.
The squares of Savannah, right? And most famous is Monterey
Square, home of the late Jim Williams, the main character of
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In the book,
Berendt described Monterey Square as "the most elegant of
Savannah's many tree-lined squares." Monterey Square is
probably the most famous. There's Forsyth Park, but that's a
different thing. That's sort of like, you know,
Central Park for
Savannahians, if there is such a term. That's really cool, and it's
kind of the focal point of downtown. But branching out from all
that are these little squares. Everything grows beautifully down
there. But they pay for it in the summer, when it's 100 degrees
with heavy humidity.
It's on the river, right? That's right. River Street, which
does run along the river, is filled with these little cobblestone
streets with little cafés and bars and restaurants. Quite frankly,
that area is a little touristy, the way that some of the streets
around the
Eiffel Tower are touristy, but it's still kind of cool.
And they still get a huge amount of people, particularly on the
weekends, and these people aren't afraid to party down in the
South, if you know what I'm saying.