Boston Traveler: Our Travel Guide to Savannah, Georgia
Head to the Hostess City for art, history, and southern hospitality.
The Mansion on Forsyth Park. / Courtesy of the Kessler Collection.
GETTING THERE
In just under three hours in the air, you can trade Boston’s unpredictable spring weather for Savannah’s balmy climes. JetBlue offers flights from Logan daily.
STAYING THERE
The stately Mansion on Forsyth Park offers easy access to the lush 30-acre park in Savannah’s historical district. Although a walk through the grounds is a must, you could spend all day enjoying the amenities of the 126-room hotel: Lounge poolside, relax at the Poseidon Spa, take a cooking class at the 700 Drayton restaurant, or scope out the art in the Grand Bohemian Gallery.
Old-school ice cream parlor Leopold’s is within walking distance of the Mansion on Forsyth Park. / Photograph by Chia Chong
A.M.
Savannah is a walker’s paradise, with its series of squares bordered by gorgeous historical homes and trees draped with Spanish moss. Stroll by the Mercer Williams House, made famous by the book and subsequent movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, or learn more about the city’s history on a tour of the Telfair Museums’ Owens-Thomas House. Save some time to gallery-hop and admire (or acquire) the work of the city’s talented artists, many of them alums of the Savannah College of Art and Design, which has its own contemporary art museum. If the humidity starts to get to you, sample a scoop at Leopold’s Ice Cream, which still serves original recipes from when the shop was founded by three brothers in 1919.
P.M.
Swing by the Savannah Bee Company to start your evening with a flight of meads, and take home some of their honey-infused beauty products. Then tuck into southern staples such as fried chicken, meatloaf, black-eyed peas, and collard greens at Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room, which has been in operation since 1943. Those looking for updated classics should head to the Grey, housed in a former Greyhound bus station. Go early for a cocktail-and-oyster happy hour and stay to indulge in such dishes as fried veal sweetbreads or foie and grits. Close out the night at the Alley Cat Lounge, a hip subterranean spot run by Boston native Scott Marshall that has a menu printed on newspaper and an entrance located, of course, off an alley.
