Savannah

Spanish moss, historic districts, and pulled pork—if I’m remembering my ancient philosophy correctly, this is the platonic ideal of a city, and this is why Savannah is magical. I’d been meaning to visit Savannah since the fall, but sometimes I’m a pretty impressive procrastinator. When a friend of mine from college visited in March, I finally made it to Georgia’s oldest city.

Some things I saw:

• The Streamliner Diner, a vintage diner car from the 1930s. A vintage diner car! This meant I got to eat pulled pork while pretending to be a Boxcar child, so win-win. I’ve long been a fan of pulled pork, but I’m learning that “barbecue” is a big deal in the South, that it is used only as a noun, not a verb, and that there are different varieties of it in each state. According to the New York Times, the diner’s pulled pork is a mix of South Carolina and Georgia traditions. The result was excellent. It’s still not clear to me what exactly distinguishes South Carolina from Georgia barbecue, but I’m willing to eat as much pulled pork as needed to find out.

• Forsyth Park. Savannah’s full of beautiful public spaces, squares in fact, but Forsyth is its biggest park. The picture above doesn’t do it justice, but it does showcase one of my favorite aspects of Savannah: Spanish moss. It’s everywhere.

• Jones Street. According to one woman we stopped on the street to ask for directions, Jones is the prettiest street in the nation. According to Joel, a nice man who works at the Savannah Visitor Center, some people think Jones Street is where the saying “Keeping up with the Joneses” comes from because each neighbor’s houses is so nice. Joel then told me that he’s from the Midwest so he knows that’s B.S.

• Chippewa Square. This square is supposedly where Forrest Gump sat and ate a lot of chocolate. But it’s hard to tell because there’s no bench to mark the spot.

• Cobblestone streets! If I was queen of the world, every town would have cobblestone streets. I’d heard that Savannah had cobblestone streets, but I didn’t find them until the end of the day, along the river. Not a bad way to end the trip.

You may have noticed that pulled pork earned the biggest entry in this list. This is not a coincidence.

 

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