If you’ve been curious about the spookiest city in America, take this episode as your sign to take a trip to Savannah, GA. 

We absolutely loved this city and were pleasantly surprised by how fun it is! You don’t need a lot of time in this town to really see it all. It’s rather small and very walkable, so if you’re staying in Savannah proper, you don’t even need a car. What you do need, is your party hat, because open containers are not only allowed, but they are encouraged around Savannah! We went into several places where they asked if we needed drinks to go, or encouraged us to bring our open drinks in. It was amazing!

We got into town midday on a Saturday and left on a Monday morning to head up to Charleston and we did a lot! We could have used another day to do more ghost tours and eat more delicious food, but two days was quite enough too if that’s all you have.

We did a night walking ghost tour around town the first night and loved it! It wasn’t so spooky, and actually gave a lot more Savannah history than we were expecting. There is a ton in this city! As one of the only southern cities not to be burned in the civil war, there’s a lot of beautiful architecture, war history, and American history in this town from the colonial and civil wars.

It’s a very walkable city, and in fact, you WANT to walk it! There’s so much to see! Walking around town is one of the best things to do in Savannah. There are many public squares, places to sit and relax, there’s even the iconic park where Forrest Gump was filmed!

Arguably one of the most iconic things to do in Savannah is the Wormsloe Historic Site and it did not disappoint! Pay the $10 fee to drive in and take all the pictures you can handle because these towering moss covered trees are as beautiful in person as they are in the pictures.

We also ate a ton of great food in Savannah, can you say fried green tomatoes?! In this episode we cover where to eat in Savannah GA including a few places we didn’t have the stomach space or time for, but would definitely do when we go again.

This episode is your Savannah GA travel guide, but if you have any questions for your upcoming trip, do not hesitate to email or DM us on Instagram.

This trip extended in Charleston, Congaree, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Asheville, NC so make sure to check out those episodes too if you want to do a week road trip exploring the US south too.

Trip to Savannah – Episode Transcript

1 (41s):
Welcome to this week’s episode of the Travel Squad podcast. Today, we are taking you with us to Savannah Georgia, which we visited earlier this year in may.

2 (1m 8s):
Savannah is known to be one of no, not one of the most haunted city in America. And this is because it has a ton of history from the revolutionary and civil wars, a ton of death history. We should say, we’ll get into that more later. The architecture is absolutely gorgeous here. The Moss covered trees are absolutely gorgeous here, but what surprised me most about this little town is it’s drinking culture. It was bringing it.

1 (1m 34s):
Yeah. You know, I wasn’t expecting that at all.

3 (1m 37s):
When you told me Kim, that there was open container in Savannah and it’s like your new Orleans or Vegas and just walking the streets, they don’t care. I got really excited about it. I mean, that was exciting in and of itself. And when you think of Savannah, it’s just really like that quintessential south that you think of, like, when you think of the south, you know, like you said, the Spanish Moss trees just hanging all tree line, old colonial and Southern style like homes. It was really, really impressive. And Savannah is actually the oldest city in the state of Georgia. It was actually established in 1733, so really, really old. So that’s around the time you’re talking about revolutionary war, which came a little bit later and it was a strategic port city in both the American revolution and the civil war.

3 (2m 23s):
And what I really, really liked about it beyond it’s just general history is the charm of the city, because it’s so old, you have those cobblestone streets, that old historic river walk area. So I just really loved Savannah all around for the history, the charm and the open container rules.

1 (2m 40s):
You know, it’s been a really long time since a city has really impressed me. I think the last city to really impress me was Chicago. And then we went to Savannah and I was like, I love it here. I was actually really impressed with the city and I was super glad that we went and I had a really great time.

3 (2m 55s):
We really haven’t done a lot of like south exploration, the United States, you know, this trip that we went on was the start of it. You know, cause we’re talking here about Savannah, but we continued on to Charleston, did a few other things, but this episode’s specifically going to focus on Savannah. But what I think is also really unique about it is I do think that is probably one of the few places that you could really see old school like south and the architecture and the charm because during the civil war general Sherman had a famous March to the sea where he pretty much burned every city, major city in the south. And they spared Savannah because the generals, the Confederacy down there kind of said, Hey, we surrender like just please don’t burn it.

3 (3m 36s):
So they continued on and left it. So there’s a lot of original old buildings where a lot of Southern places in the south don’t have that because it was burned in the civil war.

2 (3m 45s):
Does this general Sherman have anything to do with the general Sherman in Sequoia national park?

3 (3m 51s):
That is the tree you are correct.

2 (3m 53s):
That is so weird all the way in California.

3 (3m 56s):
They named it after him.

1 (3m 58s):
Well, as always, we always have some tips to start with you guys. So we’re going to jump right into our tips. And our first tip that we have is to make sure you have your ID available, especially when you’re ordering a drink because they do. I D every single one, they don’t discriminate on your age. If you’re 75, they’re still going to ID you.

3 (4m 16s):
We were at a brunch location, which we’re going to talk about that later as one of our recommendations of a place to get food and an elderly gentleman, I don’t know if he was in his seventies, but he was definitely older, late fifties, sixties even had like a veteran hat on from a war way back. And he got carded and was really, really upset about it. But everywhere we went, I mean, you know, you get carded, so have your ID on you.

2 (4m 37s):
And we already mentioned this, but you can drink and walk around the town. And not only do they allow open containers, but they encourage it.

1 (4m 45s):
I love that

2 (4m 46s):
Everywhere you go. They’re like, do you want drinks to go? You need any drinks to go? If you don’t get it, they’re looking at you weird.

3 (4m 53s):
When we did our ghost tour, they told us before we start, why don’t you go get some drinks, so pop into a CVS or go there and this and that and get it. And a lot of places actually sell to go mixed cocktails specifically for that purpose.

1 (5m 6s):
On top of that, one of the places we went out to dinner to, we were walking in with our drinks in hand and we thought that we were going to have to either chugger drinks or like set them down. And we asked if we could walk in with them because we were about to have dinner. And they’re like, oh yeah, Savannah, come on in.

2 (5m 22s):
This is Savannah.

3 (5m 23s):
And that’s exactly what he said. Well, I really thought more so because it’s rude to bring outside food and drinks into a restaurant, but he was like, oh no, just bring them on in. So again, they encourage it. Be mindful. Don’t get crazy out there, but it is an open container town. And I’ve never really seen any place like that outside of party places, again like new Orleans or Vegas. So that’s really cool and unique. Also,

2 (5m 46s):
I will say that it is kind of a party place because there’s tons of groups of people. People are walking everywhere. It’s very lively,

1 (5m 53s):
But I didn’t feel like it was overrun with that. I wasn’t

2 (5m 56s):
Like Vegas.

1 (5m 58s):
Yeah. I wasn’t like Vegas. Charlene’s like, I feel like it was still pretty classy, but people were still there having a great time and drinking. So I did really like that.

2 (6m 6s):
We were there on a Saturday night, our first night and then a Sunday night or second night, the Saturday night was definitely more lively. I wasn’t expecting it to be so busy, but it was good. It was great.

3 (6m 17s):
Another tip, keep in mind, you have to pay to park when you are downtown. So you either have to valet at some of the hotels. I mean, these are old cities. They were not designed for cars. So there’s a lot of one ways narrow streets. So the parking is minimal. Sure. They do have lots of certain things like that, but just do expect to pay

2 (6m 36s):
Except on Sundays free parking on Sundays.

3 (6m 39s):
That is very true. I forgot about that little tidbit,

1 (6m 41s):
But keeping that in mind, it is a very, very walkable city. So once you park, you really, aren’t going to have to move your car again. You can leave your car there for the entire day, as long as it allows for that. So we did valet our car both days and we just walked the entire city and then came back and got our car. But if you don’t have a car, you could very easily Uber or Lyft. If you’re not staying in that downtown area, I even saw science for free trolleys within the city.

2 (7m 7s):
Oh, I didn’t see those signs. That’s awesome. I would recommend getting an Airbnb closer to the city central. We did an Airbnb and we could have walked from where we were. It would have been a little bit of a longer walk, but if you got one, a little bit more central, you wouldn’t even need a car at all.

1 (7m 21s):
Absolutely.

3 (7m 22s):
Another really solid tip for you guys is bring mosquito repellent. Now a lot of people may be think to themselves, oh yeah. They, if they know they’re going, certain places have mosquitoes. I’m not going to lie. We are spoiled here in California. Don’t really have a lot of bugs. Don’t have a lot of mosquitoes. So I forget when we go places, especially here in the U S and again, in the south there’s bugs about, so do bring some mosquito repellent. Again, it’s a walkable city. You’re going to be walking outside a lot of outdoor dining also. So be sure to take care of yourself so you don’t get eaten alive quite literally.

1 (7m 53s):
And another thing too, going back to like the cars and the walkability. If you do rent a car, be sure to reserve your rental car in advance. When we got to the Savannah airport, the rental car situation was crazy. Some of the places weren’t even taking same day reservations. We rented a car specifically because we were doing a longer road trip as we’ve mentioned. But if you’re only going to explore Savannah, I think you can really get around with public transport, walking Uber’s lifts, all of that sort.

2 (8m 18s):
The car rental craziness that you mentioned was a three hour wait for people that had reservations. So squad tip, book it with the fast track. And the fast track is through budget.

3 (8m 34s):
It’s actually called fast break and I am a fast break member, meaning that they already have my information on file my credit card and everything like that. So certain locations, and they didn’t necessarily have this at the Savannah airport, but certain locations, you don’t have to go to the normal counter. You go straight to where the cars are. They’ll have the keys set aside for you for the vehicle. You just pick it up at the Savannah airport though. They did have a dedicated line for the fast track. So we got to bypass that three hour line that we heard everybody bitching about in line. Like they’ve been waiting three hours,

2 (9m 7s):
Huge savings.

3 (9m 8s):
I know. So I got to go to the front of the line as a fast break member. They called me up, but they still didn’t have any cars ready because it was so busy. And we had to wait like 30 minutes for them to finish cleaning the car, detailing it, et cetera. So I don’t know what the situation is. We weren’t even there, like on a busy time in general. So I think that’s just crazy thing of Savannah’s popularity and a smaller airport.

2 (9m 30s):
Here’s the thing. And this is why I wanted to bring it up. I don’t think it’s just Savannah. I think there’s an issue going on with rental cars right now, because just this weekend, a family friend was coming into San Diego, needed a rental car, had a reservation, got in line, same situation in the San Diego airport. We didn’t line for two hours for a rental car.

1 (9m 52s):
Oh my gosh, that’s crazy.

3 (9m 53s):
So if you’re going to rent a car, then I guess sign up for whatever rental companies rewards program that they have. Cause they usually have dedicated lines for you and you may get to that front of the line and actually have that car maybe saved in reserved. So a good tip that does actually make sense because during COVID at the beginning of it, all these rental cars sold their inventory. And now I guess they’re trying to catch back up and get new cars. And then we do have a new car shortage. Don’t we? Because of the microchip. So

2 (10m 19s):
Yeah,

3 (10m 19s):
I think a lot of things are playing into that. So very solid tip Kim, but let’s get right into Savannah because we started you off with the tips, a little bit of the history, but I’m so excited to talk about it. We flew on a Saturday, landed bypass that rental car debacle. So to say, although we did have a little bit of weight, but we hit the ground running as you know, we always do at the squad. And what did we do when we first got there that night, Saturday night ladies.

1 (10m 43s):
So we decided that we wanted to take a ghost tour of Savannah and we were all super excited about this. We were talking about like, what level of scariness do we want the ghost tour to be? Cause they had ones that were good for families. They had one which was called the dead of the night tour, which was supposed to be 16 and older, no young kids. It has to be like the scariest ghost tour in Savannah. So that is what we ended up booking.

3 (11m 7s):
And by the way, it didn’t turn out to be very scary.

2 (11m 10s):
I love

3 (11m 11s):
That. I love the tour number one, but I don’t know if our tour guide, because he just had this kind of demeanor to him in a good way. He’s kind of like playful, like going back and forth. So he kept it kind of light. Although the topics, what he was talking about could be kind of scary, but it wasn’t like spooky. So I don’t know in general, if that’s the way it always is or if it was because of our tour guide.

1 (11m 31s):
So this tour was supposed to go over some of Savannah’s demons, possessions and murders and speed, very spooky. We paid $35 for the walking tour. Honestly, I felt like it was a little overpriced because there was a lot of people. They actually broke us up into like several different walking groups, but I still really enjoyed our time. They had two different tour times we went on the 9:00 PM tour and I think there was an 11:00 PM tour as well. And what I really liked is we learned a lot about Savannah’s history, even though it was a ghost tour.

3 (12m 3s):
Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts. And then we always say it as the squad, you know, sometimes it’s really cool when you get the history. So even though this was like ghost tour oriented, you really did good, a good rundown of the history of Savannah, the rich aristocrats of the time, why it’s haunted, et cetera. But at the start of the tour, going back to what you were saying, I do feel like it was a little overcrowded because Savannah has so many little towns squares and we were meeting at one of those squares to start the tour. And we got there and I couldn’t believe how many people were just in that square. And pretty much everybody who was there, there was literally like 40 people like trailing on with us.

3 (12m 43s):
So I felt like it was a little overcrowded in that sense of,

2 (12m 47s):
I kept meeting up with other tours. The content was interesting though. And one of the craziest things about Savannah is that the entire city is built on a graveyard. And we mentioned it’s the most haunted city in America. We did have some ghost activity at our Airbnb. So I think it is,

3 (13m 4s):
We really did. We’re not just saying this. We all felt like there was a little bit of a ghost active with stuff that we know. We turn off the lights and the coffee maker, for sure. We come back from a day out and they’re on doing crazy stuff and hearing noises in the middle of the night too. So

1 (13m 17s):
Yeah, you know, there was one morning where Jamal and I woke up and I swear that Kim and Leah were up in the other room. Cause we could hear just like whispers back and forth and chatter. And I thought, okay, they’re up? Whatever, no big deal. And then like five minutes later I heard Kim’s alarm go off. And then I hear Kim actually get up. And I asked her, I said, were you guys awake and talking before your alarm went off, she was like, no, we just woke up. And I’m like, Ooh, that was a little scary,

2 (13m 41s):
Very weird. But that was cool to walk around the city. And we were at one point standing in a square. I don’t know if you guys remember that first square we were standing in with the name of it was

3 (13m 51s):
Where the tour started. Yeah. I couldn’t remember.

2 (13m 54s):
Not, not the one where we took off from it, but where the hangings happened square, right square. The first woman ever hung was here in this area and he talked about how she was pregnant. And so now people who come with young kids, they, the ghost tries to take the kids.

3 (14m 11s):
Right? Cause they were going to hang her. Then as they were going to hang her, she said I’m pregnant. She really was pregnant. They kept her alive until she gave birth. As soon as she gave birth, they took the baby away. Then hunger that very day or the next day. So the legend is that Alice Riley does come out only when there are infant children in the park and we’ll try to abduct them, but right. Square is unique because this is where they did a lot of the executions. You know, at one point the French had a very prominent influence in colonial America. So they were doing guillotine out there where they chop off people’s heads. They had hangings the CVS that we pass that’s right on the corner of right square is said to be really, really as well, because that was the jail.

3 (14m 53s):
The building on the opposite side of right square was the courthouse. So it was just this literal circle of death courthouse to jail, to the right square for the hangings or the guillotine. So it was very, very interesting. And that CVS also, they said there are no public restrooms. There’s always the help one at sign out because it is a very spooky CVS. You went in and we bought beer for it. Well, what did you feel like in there it

2 (15m 18s):
Fell

3 (15m 19s):
Off and you went in before he started talking about the fact that that one was even scary.

2 (15m 24s):
Like the shelves were barren. It was like, the lighting was weird. I don’t know. I felt weird there.

1 (15m 30s):
Yeah. He said it was very, very spooky. I, he said that people will because there’s no public restrooms. The only restroom in that whole building is like down in the basement. And there are times where employees will walk down there and folding chairs will be arranged in a circle and other strange things will happen. And so a lot of people will work there and then like, won’t use the restroom there we’ll hold their pee for their entire shift. Or we’ll just cut out screaming because of things that might happen like during their shift. So it was very, very interesting. We also went to the swirl weed house and we heard about the demon that was in the basement. And we heard about what happened there with the owner of the house.

1 (16m 12s):
He was having an affair with one of his maids. And so his wife jumped from there. Second story balcony died. And then leader in the maid, he was having an affair with that was found, hung in her quarters. So both of them haunt the house as well.

3 (16m 26s):
And the supposedly demon, this sorrel weed house was built on top of an area during the revolutionary war where they buried a lot of bodies also. And he specifically excavated a basement. So the legend is that he displaced so many souls of people that died and everything like that. So I don’t know how many of you listening actually believe it, but regardless of the belief or not the history that you learn again from the people in the town, from the revolutionary to civil war, the aristocrats that were the plantation owners and things like that, you really get a lot of that in this ghost tour, even though it is geared to be a little bit more ghost Tory, right.

3 (17m 6s):
But you still get that awesome history.

2 (17m 8s):
I thought it was going to be like people jumping out and you know, a ghost story and then they scare you and that kind of stuff. But it was actually more of a history tour.

1 (17m 16s):
Yeah. Like we learned a lot about the Marshall house, which is now a hotel, but previously it was used like three different times as a hospital during the civil war.

3 (17m 24s):
Well, I think it was always a hotel it’s continued on, but during those times of the civil war, it was used as a hospital. They did amputations of soldiers in there and then they would take the limbs because they had nowhere else to throw them, bury them in the basement and things of that nature. So it’s claimed that the Marshall house has really haunted also.

1 (17m 43s):
Yeah. So I felt like with this walking tour, cause we went to a ton of different squares, different houses. We walked the whole city. I was really glad that we did this the first night because I felt like he gave us a really good overview of the city and a lot of the history as well.

3 (17m 56s):
So that was night one. And again, we landed kind of mid afternoon, early evening, hit the ground running with this ghost tour. What did we do the next day? Sunday, our full day in Savannah.

2 (18m 7s):
So when we go on trips like this, there are iconic spots that you need to see. One of those is for park, which is, you know, known for its fountain and for its role in the movie. What movie was that? Jamal,

3 (18m 20s):
Forrest, Gump,

2 (18m 22s):
Forrest Gump. Everyone knows that. And you have to see it. But when we go to these spots, we want to get good pictures of it. And we don’t want a bunch of people in the picture. So Brittany of course wanted to hit this one first thing in the morning before a bunch of people came. So we did that. It was pretty close to where we were staying actually. Yeah, it was

1 (18m 39s):
So actually only few blocks away. But the park itself we had driven by was beautiful. Like going up to the park, there’s just these huge Oak trees with that Spanish Moss hanging down when you’re at like the center of the park, there’s a beautiful fountain, just very picturesque. And it was really nice to go early in the morning, the lighting was beautiful. There wasn’t a lot of people there. We were able to get really good photos. And I was really happy that we made this our first stop of the day.

2 (19m 7s):
We did also return here that night, right before we turned in for the night to get night pictures of it as well. I’d recommend both because both pictures brought a different element to it.

1 (19m 17s):
And it wasn’t crowded at either time.

3 (19m 19s):
Although the ghosts were about possibly in the evening,

2 (19m 23s):
There was something weird out there.

3 (19m 24s):
So we went to Forsyth park just simply because of its notoriety. It’s a view full picture as park again with the fountain and the trees. But we did another very iconic thing to do in Savannah, which was go to the worms, slow historic site. Now, if you’ve probably ever Googled any image of Savannah, I promise you, this image is going to come up. It is the very long driveway that leads to an old plantation. The plantation is no longer there, but the driveway is there. And why is a driveway famous? It’s lined with the big Oak trees that are literally hundreds of years old that has that famous Spanish Moss that hangs from it.

3 (20m 5s):
There are these beautiful colors. And so it’s very iconic. And as a matter of fact, I think we even have a photo of this image. Well, I shouldn’t say a photo. It’s an actual painting that we got from bed bath and beyond. And I do think it is of that line street that is upstairs. And I didn’t know it. And we were there. Yeah. So it’s even that famous that it’s one of those common like reprints that they sell, you know, photos and painting.

1 (20m 28s):
He got there right after we went to Forsyth park and you do have to be mindful of their hours because they do have a gate. So they’re open from like nine to about five o’clock.

2 (20m 37s):
Everything in the south closes at 5:00 PM,

1 (20m 39s):
Everything. And it was $10 a person to enter. So just keep that in mind too. But right. When you enter the gates, there is a opportunity to park and then buy your tickets. And that’s a really good spot to take some of the photos. And even if you do have cars way in the background, if you position yourself, right, you won’t get them in your picture, which is great. And if they’re far enough back, you can’t even see the car. And once you do drive down the driveway, pull out your phone, take some videos. The driveway was much longer than I actually thought it was going to be.

3 (21m 8s):
It went like a mile and a half, two miles long.

1 (21m 10s):
Yeah. It went on a lot longer. And so you get such pretty views. We ended up stopping about three fourths of the way down and getting out and taking some more photos and videos just in that area as well. But then you do end up at the historic site and although the plantation really isn’t there, they do have like a tour that you can follow and you can kind of see ruins of the colonial estate and some of that area as well.

3 (21m 35s):
Yeah. You know, quite honestly the history that they have there because it is really, I don’t want to use the word rundown, but the big house is no longer there. So to speak, you just have a couple of the graveyards of the owners and things of that nature, but it is really cool for kind of like a forested walk area that is outside the main driveway. But in terms of the history aspect that you’re going to get from it, I wasn’t necessarily too impressed with that portion, but it is an iconic site to go see. And I still enjoyed it very much.

2 (22m 4s):
I would pass on the walk because it was, you know, underwhelming and it ruined my white shoes.

3 (22m 9s):
Well, you wore white shoes out to the south, in a forest area. I did the same thing to mind

2 (22m 16s):
The drive and the trees in that long stretch is the highlight of this area. And you have to see it.

1 (22m 23s):
They do have guided tours though. We didn’t go on one. They have them like four times a day. And so you may have learned a little bit more about the history of that plantation. If we went on the guided tour, if you’re only going there for the photos, you don’t need a lot of time, but if you’re going there to do the photos and walk the grounds, I’d probably say you need about two hours or so, Hey travelers, let’s take a quick detour to talk all about our Travel Itineraries that we’ve created just for you. We now have six different trip itineraries one week in Kauai

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1 (24m 56s):
And then from there, we went to the bone of venture cemetery, which I was really excited to go to. I had been doing some research about Savannah and I read that this was one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world. And, you know, we were in a haunted, spooky place. So we definitely went by the cemetery to check it out.

2 (25m 15s):
It was cool. I kind of wish that it would stay open later than five because dusk, it would have been really cool.

3 (25m 22s):
Maybe it’s two haunted ladies and that’s why they closed the gates. But I mean, you would think like, honestly, like why go to a cemetery, right? It’s kind of creepy, you know, if you’re not doing as part of a, like a ghost tour, but it is very famous and iconic. It’s literally not that they have rankings of this because they do apparently one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world. And it kind of has this like Gothic style flare to it. And again, in the south, in particular, in this area, you have the big trees with the Spanish Moss. And I can’t reiterate that enough. Like if you clearly don’t have them anywhere, except for in this general area of the United States, but when you’re there, it’s so impressive to see again, the trees with the Maso gives it with the style of the graveyard with the headstones and the giant mausoleums.

3 (26m 11s):
Like it really gives it this unique flare to it. And I enjoyed it very much, but I agree with you, Kim, I think it would be a lot cooler to kind of see it at dusk ish time, because you would still want it for the light to see the trees and everything else.

1 (26m 24s):
Yeah. And there were some beautiful statutes there. And one thing that I wasn’t expecting was that entire families were buried together. So when you get a plot, it’s like a true plot where you could fit

3 (26m 34s):
Like 20 by 20. Yeah.

1 (26m 36s):
You can fit a whole bunch of people on that land and you could see whole families being buried together, which was interesting to me, there were some where you had a whole big plot and there was only one grave stone there. And then there was other words where it was like there was 15 there. And I also expected everyone to have been buried like in the past, but I saw some that were actually varied somewhat recently, like 2016, some of their older ancestors or relatives are buried much earlier in time.

3 (27m 3s):
That’s the crazy unique thing about it. They’re literally like family plots in certain areas. So you see some people buried in the 17 hundreds and then still within that family plot is the more recent one. So you see this continuation of time of like families and just even their history in this area. It’s so unique.

1 (27m 22s):
I don’t need to spend long there, but I definitely recommend either driving through or if you just have a short amount of time parking and then just walking through some of that area, because it was really beautiful.

3 (27m 32s):
I think they even have guided tours in that area where they’ll take you to some of the famous people that are actually buried there and give you a little bit more history. We did see some people doing a tour. So there is that option. If you want to go a little bit more in depth into it, but we kind of really went there to just see it and the photos as kind of weird as that sounds, but it was really cool.

2 (27m 50s):
Another one of the top sites in Savannah is the cathedral of St. John. This is named one of the top 10 historical sites in the USA. And we actually did try to go here, but we couldn’t go in because there was a massive graduation taking place, but it did look beautiful from the outside. And apparently from the inside, it’s also quite a masterpiece.

1 (28m 10s):
Yeah. It’s supposedly has a French Gothic style and it makes it a really gorgeous backdrop to the Savannah skyline as well. And so I’m glad we got to see it from the outside, but it would have been really cool to see it from the inside

2 (28m 23s):
The history dates back to like 1700. And that’s also what I’ve just, I loved about Savannah is almost all of the deep history. There, it goes back to the 17 hundreds. It’s like, you just don’t get that in California.

1 (28m 34s):
Nope. You don’t, you don’t get that on the west coast. Really?

3 (28m 36s):
Yeah. Well actually I think they rebuilt this cathedral because it was founded in the 17 hundreds by like the first French colonialists that came to the United States who were in this particular area in Savannah. And then there was a fire and I think they built it in the late 1870s after the civil war, but it’s still like old and it has that history and they kept with that original French style.

1 (28m 58s):
We went on a Sunday as well, but so Monday through Saturday, for $2, you can do like self guided tours. We also went by another cemetery called colonial park cemetery. We actually went by the several times during our walking on our own. And then also with the ghost tour, it was very old and creepy as well. It’s supposed to be haunted. And as we mentioned earlier, we said that Savannah was built on a graveyard and it’s like, where do you start? And stop that really? Like, so the cemetery itself has a gate and a sidewalk around it, but you can see that they’ve actually built that sidewalk and gate over some bodies. There was one tombstone that was very close to the fence and you could see her name and her name was Margaret.

1 (29m 42s):
And you could tell that we were like standing on her at one point.

3 (29m 46s):
Yeah, the tombstone wasn’t facing in the park where you see the riding and her body was the other way you’re standing on top of it outside of the gate. But what I really liked about the colonial park cemetery, and again, they gave us this information on the ghost tour is that if you look at the bricks and the pathway that surrounds the giant square, that is the cemetery Savannah again, old city has the cobblestone bricks and things like that. This is the only location in Savannah where the bricks actually have designs. And he was telling us a lot of the slaves that came from Haiti that they had over there. Obviously they do believe in like voodoo and other stuff like that. They put spells on those bricks and you can see the etchings of the designs and it’s supposed to keep the spirits within the walls of the cemetery of where they did it.

3 (30m 30s):
So again, there’s another piece of that unique history that you get all the way from the slave trade coming from Haiti and the voodoo and how that plays a role into it and what they designed. So really, really cool that you learn something new all the time in Savannah. And I loved it.

1 (30m 43s):
Yeah. And they also said that right outside of the cemetery was a dueling grounds of people died right outside of the cemetery. And if you did go inside the cemetery, you could see some of the graves from the very first colonists, as well as like a lot of people that died from like the yellow fever epidemic in like the 1820s. So really cool would be cool to go there after dark and do like a ghost hunt. Would you do that, Kim?

2 (31m 7s):
I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe, maybe like, I mean, knowing the ghost tour, wasn’t that spooky, maybe the ghost hunt, wouldn’t be that spooky.

3 (31m 15s):
Another point of interest that you may want to go to when you’re in Savannah, you know, us, the squad, we love to go places where they film TV shows like the house when we were in Chicago or the full house house in San Francisco, things of that nature. Well, Savannah is where they filmed a good portion of Forrest Gump. We went to Chippewa square, which is the square where Forrest Gump is sitting on the bench, waiting for his bus. Now, unfortunately they have removed the bench. I know, you’d think they would keep it, they’ve removed it, unfortunately, but you can go to this location and it’s very famous for where they filmed it. But again, I love old historical cities that have lots of squares and parks and things like that.

3 (31m 56s):
So each one you think you’ve seen it all, but they’re all unique and different at the same time. And this one here, a famous Oscar winning movie has been filmed at

2 (32m 4s):
Savannah also has a city market where you can go walk and shop. We went into a little place called birds cookies. You can go in there and get as many samples as you want for free, highly recommend that cookies. Aren’t that good? But,

3 (32m 18s):
Well, the cookies left a lot to be desired. I won’t lie, but beyond going for just the birds famous cookies store, I love going to cities that have like markets and this is Savannah’s market area. And again, you know, historic city. So it’s in historic buildings. It’s really cool, very quaint. And it’s nice four blocks of that open air shopping, dining and art and everything like

2 (32m 39s):
Bustling.

3 (32m 40s):
Absolutely.

1 (32m 40s):
And then we also wanted to check out river street, which was really cool. I really liked this area. It’s where you’re going to find a lot of the cobblestone streets. There’s a lot of history do the abandoned warehouses from across the river, but now it’s done up really, really nicely, but there was one hotel. It was the JW Marriott. We went inside there and it was literally like it was a museum. Yeah. It was really the river. There was a ton of fossils and geocode we spent like at least an hour in there exploring like what they had.

3 (33m 10s):
I never thought a hotel lobby would intrigued me so much. And it did here at the JW Marriott, but the whole river street section, I love because again, you know, we, you can maybe tell by the name river street, but Savannah is very close to the ocean. So this river is not too far away. And it was a main through fare for trade and everything back in the colonial days. And even still currently, I mean, we saw shipping containers going through there, but just imagine an old from the 17 hundreds like industrial area, that’s now done up really well, the old cobblestone streets still, but now you have dining shops, restaurants, everything. I think that JW Marriott was retrofitted from an old power plant. It had the two stacks that was there.

3 (33m 52s):
So really lots of unique stuff in the river walk river street area. And this honestly like outside of the treeline streets was probably my favorite area of Savannah. I really loved it. Lots to do in here and very lively and bustling.

1 (34m 5s):
And if you walk quite a ways down river street, we went to a place called echo square and we went here at night. We actually got to watch part of the eclipse starting here, but it’s called echo square because there’s an X in the middle. And while you’re on the X, if you’re with someone else, you can really hear an echo due to the, like the acoustics. And we couldn’t really figure out why or where, but it was a lot of fun. Like, okay, you stand here, I’ll stand here and see like what it sounds like. And we had a lot of fun doing that.

3 (34m 34s):
I mean, there’s really so much to do in Savannah. I mean, we talked about some of the highlights and stuff that we did. I mean, again, there’s 22 different squares that has the history. There’s lots of good places to eat and drink. So we talked about the sites to see, but we had some really, really good food in Savannah. So let’s talk about some of the places to eat and the delicious Southern cuisine that we had out here.

1 (34m 55s):
You know, I will say that the first night was my favorite place to eat. The place that we ate at was called Vic’s on the river and it was on the river, but what was awesome about it was we had river views and we ordered an appetizer of fried green tomatoes and it came with the goat cheese and a balsamic glaze. It was so amazing. Those are

5 (35m 16s):
Also had grits.

1 (35m 18s):
Oh yeah, it was on top of grits. The app was larger than I was expecting really good, really tasty. And my favorite preparation of the fried green tomatoes that we had,

3 (35m 28s):
You know, it was really, really shocking as, and I’ll say this as we’re getting into the food section, I don’t think you’re really going to find inexpensive food and Savannah. I feel like if you’re going to have like a normal plate at a restaurant is going to be, you know, maybe $25 and above, and it is what it is. Right. But when we saw the price of the appetizer for these five green tomatoes, I think they were what like eight, $10, which is actually pretty good for an app. And I thought to myself like, oh, you know, looking at the menu prices, that’s really, really good. It’s an app. It’s not going to be very big. It could have been a meal

2 (36m 2s):
Was my meal. Yeah.

3 (36m 3s):
It was your meals specifically. They gave you three fried green tomatoes on the grits with the goat cheese. So good bang for your buck and really the best fried green tomato preparation again that we had. But if you don’t want any of the entrees, they had lots of appetizers that you can actually just order as entrees. So we got the asparagus, we got another side of cheese, grits, the Mac and cheese and other stuff like that. So you can go in here and we really did love Vic’s on the river.

2 (36m 32s):
The other dinner place that we ate at was called river house. This one was also on river street. Surprisingly, we didn’t have dinner anywhere else. And you know, someone had told us that was a local. They said, stay away from river street. It’s very touristy. So I almost wonder if we had had dinner somewhere more within the city of prices would have been different, but I don’t regret it because this place was awesome.

3 (36m 51s):
And that’s funny that they said stay away from it. Cause it was touristy. And to an extent it is, but I still think it was one of the coolest parts of Savannah, at least for me. So I liked it.

2 (37m 1s):
Well,

3 (37m 2s):
That is very true. But at the river house we had scallop and shrimp, Alfredo

2 (37m 6s):
Chicken

3 (37m 7s):
Modified hers to a chicken. Alfredo, you know, she won’t touch the fish.

2 (37m 11s):
It

3 (37m 11s):
Was good. Fried green tomatoes. Again, we split a bottle of wine, lots of really, really good stuff out here at river house.

1 (37m 20s):
And this is the restaurant where they let us in with the beer. We were already drinking. They’re like, oh yeah, come on in. This is Savannah. So

3 (37m 27s):
BYOB, you know what? Here’s a squad tip. Maybe it will work. Bring a bottle of wine already. Kind of have it open. And now you don’t have a court convenient. You could bring in your wine in this port. And I just thought of this right now. That might be a good one for you guys at the river house.

2 (37m 42s):
I think my favorite place we ate though, was common. We went here for brunch. The food was okay myself in Jamal. We got

3 (37m 50s):
A chicken and waffles,

2 (37m 52s):
Chicken and waffles, baby. It was delicious.

1 (37m 56s):
I will say your guys’ chicken and waffles was great. I ended up getting something called the not so ordinary bull. And honestly it was a little ordinary and a little,

3 (38m 6s):
It looked like it was going to be really, really good by the description. When I tried it, when it came out for Brittany, like I won’t lie. I wasn’t necessarily impressed. But again, common is a brunch place. Lots of Southern cuisine, the chicken and waffles is fire. I would highly recommend it. Your bowl, Brittany. Yeah. Did leave a lot to be desired, but they do have a very, very reasonably priced bottomless mimosas. And

2 (38m 30s):
That’s the reason. And

3 (38m 31s):
That is the reason we came. And guess what, when you leave and you’re done at the restaurant, they give you your bottomless mimosas to go. They give you one .

2 (38m 39s):
They don’t even ask you it comes with it. And we definitely drank a lot of mimosas here. Like we didn’t even need the, to go mimosa. We were already perfectly fine without it.

3 (38m 50s):
The irony is when he brought us the to go mimosas, I took a sip and it was a little too much orange juice and not enough bubbles. So I told him, and he came out with some more bubbles to just add in there for us and give it in the bigger cups.

1 (39m 3s):
Yes.

2 (39m 4s):
Yes he did.

1 (39m 5s):
And do you expect to wait there? We did wait about an hour, but during our wait, we just decided to walk around the town for a little bit. So that was nice. On the first night too, we ended up going to Leopold. I really wanted to go there. It’s a very famous ice cream shop. It’s actually where the 2d, fruity flavor was created. It does have a very long line. However, it does move fairly quickly. So I was happy with that. I got a butter pecan scoop and it was delicious.

2 (39m 30s):
I think the ice cream is great, no complaints at all, but I do think it’s very, very hyped. I mean, I didn’t think it was like the best ice cream I’ve ever had in my life. True. Every tech talk video, every article about Savannah will tell you to go here. And I think maybe it’s like the only ice cream place in Savannah because, or just has a lot of history because the ice cream wasn’t like through the roof. Amazing. It was good though.

3 (39m 52s):
Yeah. I mean, it was definitely above average. Was it like, oh, it’s worth a stop. I don’t know. But it’s one of those things that it’s famous in the region. If you’re there, I get and have a sweet tooth, I guess you should go ahead and try it, but agreed. There’s even a spot here in San Diego. That’s supposedly ranked one of the top 10, like ice creameries. Now that Brittany and I went to go try and I had it. I’m just like, what is this? Like, how has this top tip like us? You know what I mean? And I think Leopold is listed on that list also. So very, very famous spot to go ahead and get ice cream.

1 (40m 20s):
And while we were doing our research, there were some other places to eat and drink at in Savannah that we didn’t have a trance to try. But we wanted to mention to you guys, one was called the Wilkes house. They were only open Monday through Friday. We were there on a weekend. So we didn’t even have the chance or opportunity to go there cash only, but they serve their food, family style, Southern food. So you’re sitting down with people you don’t know at a table, they’re bringing out a whole bunch of different types of Southern food. And you guys are just enjoying and eating the meal as a big group.

2 (40m 50s):
That would have been really fun to do. I did something like that in Nashville and it was really, really cool. So that’s a bummer. We couldn’t do that. MoSo really bummed. We didn’t go to the peach cobbler factory. We just were eating and drinking so much that there was just no time and no room in my stomach for it. But I wanted it so badly.

1 (41m 9s):
Not really good when we walked in though, cause we did walk by to check it out and then we said we were going to go back, but like

3 (41m 15s):
We had just eaten so you didn’t get it at that point of time. And yeah, it just never came to

2 (41m 19s):
Fruition. Forced it down. We should

3 (41m 21s):
All just get it taken up by

1 (41m 23s):
Done one and just split it amongst all of us.

2 (41m 27s):
Biggest regret and Savannah is not going there or not getting it. At least just smelling it.

1 (41m 32s):
Another place that was recommended was called coastal empire brew company. You can do tours from $10 and you get to sample during the entire occasion and they have 16 different options in the tap rooms. So that’s pretty cool.

2 (41m 44s):
Why was I not made aware of this one? I would have totally wanted to go here.

1 (41m 48s):
Well, it’s been on our list, Kim. I

2 (41m 50s):
Not see this one at all.

3 (41m 52s):
I know that I’m finding about, about the brewery now, too. I feel like Brittany left this one out. Cause she knows it would be on the list to go.

1 (41m 59s):
No, like honestly it was on our list and we just never made our way there. I don’t even remember passing it.

2 (42m 5s):
I didn’t see it at all.

3 (42m 6s):
Point being it’s on the list now Kim and I are finding out about it. But if Britney did the research on it, I can tell you coastal empire brew company probably comes highly recommended because Brittany only puts the good stuff on the list. Another one is going to be the old pink house. We really, really want it to go ahead and go here. Why was it that we didn’t go where they closed on Sundays too? Like

1 (42m 27s):
Where are they closed on Sundays? They felt like,

2 (42m 28s):
Oh no, they,

3 (42m 29s):
Well, we wanted to do brunch here. Originally when we started looking at brunches and brunches, they didn’t have on Sunday, which is the most silliest thing. They have it weekdays and on Saturday and we just couldn’t do it on Saturday also because we got in there a little bit later. So I think that’s what it was. I think they’re open on Sundays, but the brunch is closed for Sundays, which I think Sunday brunch. Right. So

1 (42m 52s):
Right. You should also make reservations here if you go here. But this restaurant is one supposedly haunted and known for ghosts, but two it’s more of a fine dining elegant experience with the chandelier’s 18th century architecture, like a lovely fireplace in the dining room. So it’s more of like elevated Southern cuisine

2 (43m 14s):
Next time. Cause there will be a next time.

3 (43m 16s):
I’m ready to go back to Savannah. I loved it.

2 (43m 18s):
I had a great time there I ride squaddies you know what time it is? Questions of the week. All right. Number one question here. How long should I spend exploring Savannah?

1 (43m 38s):
We were there for, I would say like a full day and then like maybe a little half. I would have loved two to three days in Savannah. I think that would have been the perfect amount of time.

2 (43m 48s):
I think so too. Cause we were like really go, go, go. And there was a lot we didn’t do we

1 (43m 52s):
Missed out on your peach

2 (43m 53s):
Cobbler. There’s just so much to eat and drink there honestly.

1 (43m 57s):
Oh, so many good places to eat and drink. And it’s like, how do you pick where you’re going to go?

3 (44m 1s):
I guess you need more time to do the foodie paradise. That is Savannah because I really enjoyed everything that I put in my mouth from the drinks to the food itself. And again, except for a, Brittany’s a little mishap at comments on her brunch choice right there. That was like the only subpar thing. Unfortunately

2 (44m 17s):
I’d love to go back and do yeah, like maybe another weekend, a full weekend and just eat as much as possible and know you’re going in eating. So like get one thing here, one thing there and go around. Yeah.

3 (44m 30s):
I would love to do another eating tour. I would love to go back also. We did the ghost tour. I would love to do another, just kind of like regular history tour of some sorts, because there’s just so much in the area. Maybe this time a civil war tour or a colonial tour, anything that they have, I think would be really interesting to do. So you could spend a lot of time, but quite honestly, I wouldn’t think you need more than four days here. Yeah. I would say anywhere between two full days to three days would be adequately sufficient

2 (44m 56s):
Question number two, there are so many ghost tourists to choose from. Should I do more than one or will it be repetitive?

1 (45m 3s):
Well from the research that I did, there are different types of ghost tours. You can do a tour of just one specific house even. So it really depends on what you’re interested in. But one thing that I did see on our way to echo square is we saw like a trolley bus that looked a little bit spookier and it looked like the people on that were having a good time. And it sounded like a little eerie. I would probably book that if I were to do things differently,

2 (45m 29s):
I would say if you do a tour and you also want to do like a paranormal activity, do one that’s in a haunted place, right.

3 (45m 37s):
They have a lot of the tourists too. And that’s something, I guess maybe if we had more time because we did look, what is it at the sorrel house to see how much it costs because they did have the tours. But at that moment when we went by it and again, not on the tour, just in our general walk-in of Savannah and the next day we inquired about it, we weren’t ready to do it at that time when we thought maybe we’ll do it in the evening or do something. So I do think it would be fun if you’re adventurous enough to go into one of those houses and do one of those tours.

2 (46m 4s):
All right. Our third and final question today is your trip to Savannah really inspired me to go, but I don’t have anyone to go with. Is this a city that would be fun to do solo? Hm, good question. I think that it is a city that you can absolutely do solo. There’s just so much to do. And there’s so many tours that you’d be with people along the way. So you wouldn’t feel isolated. It’s an amazing city to go with for a group of friends. Absolutely. But I think you could do it solo for sure.

3 (46m 32s):
I really think you could do it solo. The only thing that would kind of be a bummer about doing it solo in Savannah is that it is an open container place. So if you like to drink, then it’s kind of like, oh, you’re kind of having drinks by yourself in a sense.

2 (46m 46s):
Well, I think if you’re someone that’s social, you’ll make friends very easily.

3 (46m 49s):
That’s very true. Especially if you’re on the tour, number one, but you’re right. Going to a restaurant or bar or something that is very, very true. So if you actually go there with the thought of like, yeah, I’m going to socialize with people. Yes.

2 (47m 2s):
My friend Sophia is on a European vacation right now for two months by herself. She’s the most social person, every picture she posts she’s with someone else they’re doing something else, crazy

3 (47m 13s):
People on these trips

2 (47m 14s):
Left and right. So yeah, I think you can definitely rock this one solo.

1 (47m 18s):
So one thing we didn’t mention in our episode that I just want to throw in real quick was the weather. Well, it was pretty humid and hot in Savannah, but we still had a really good time. And on when we went, even though we went in may, there was a summer thunderstorm and keep that in mind that in some of these Southern states, in areas that there are some just Southern downpours during the summer,

2 (47m 40s):
Of course, we brought the umbrellas and left them in the car when we parked.

3 (47m 45s):
Yeah. We had a stop at the park or square where they filmed Forrest Gump. There was a church right across the way, and they had a covering and we hung out at the church for about 30 minutes. Luckily we still had our to go almost as an ad. So we were just sipping on them and front of the church. So that was really fun and cool. But yeah. Good. A reminder, Brittany, there are going to be summer thunderstorms and rainstorms out there.

2 (48m 9s):
Savannah was amazing. We all loved it a lot. We were pleasantly surprised and we definitely want to go back as you heard, so hope this inspired you to take a trip there to thank you so much for tuning in to our episode this week. Make sure to keep the adventures going with us by following us on YouTube, Instagram, tic talk at Travel Squad Podcast, and send us in your questions of the week.

3 (48m 30s):
If you found that information, this episode to be useful, or if you thought we were just playing funny, please be sure to share it with a friend that would enjoy it too. And as always, please subscribe, rate and review our podcast and tune in every travel Tuesday for new episodes

1 (48m 43s):
And stay tuned for next week’s episode, we have some more amazing adventures and tips in store for you.

Savannah Tours

We did a ghost tour on the first night in town and would highly recommend booking one or more of the spooky tours! You get so much history and a little creepy experiences at night walking around time. If you have more time, I would also recommend a food tour because there is so much good food to eat in Savannah!