My Eight-Week Guide to Savannah, GA

As someone who has grown up in Northern Virginia and lived here my whole life, I recently had the pleasure to reinvent myself as a Georgia resident. At least someone who’s there part of the time. I went down during the pandemic when I didn’t have work to help with the Ossoff and Wernock campaigns then hung around. I then went down for the 2022 primaries and most recently for the general election. All in all, I’ve been there a little over 8 weeks over the past 2 years.

Overview:

Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia but it also claims the title by quite a large margin because the second, third, fourth, and fifth oldest cities were burned to the ground in Sherman’s March in the Civil War. Maybe, Sherman was a mole for the Savannah tourist bureau?

As a result the city is mad historic. The downtown era is known for its parks that are each one block wide. This was part of James Oglethorpe’s plan in 1733 where there was to be a little green space every few blocks. The blocks are fun to walk through because each one’s a little different. The central historic downtown is about 12–14 blocks wide and about 8 blocks tall. It’s highlighted by the pedestrian mall of Broughton Street which has most of the interesting shops and City Market which is a much smaller pedestrian mall that packs a lot in two blocks. The truth is that the downtown is zoned kind of like a free-for-all and there’s…