Savannah is a great walking town. A stroll around will take you to twenty-two ecologically diverse neighborhood parks and squares. Each with a rich history and neighborhood feel where you can engage with the Savannah of today and the past. Some of my favorites include:
Lafayette Square which houses Flannery O’Conner’s childhood home where you can learn about the author's early life. It a short walk to the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist and its stained-glass artistry.
Chippewa Square is home to the Savannah Theater one of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the United States. It is also known as Forrest Gump Square where you too can sit on the bench and talk about life as a box of chocolate.
Forsyth Park is a very large park with a 160-year-old fountain inspired by a fountain in Paris. It is a great resting spot with a playground and sports fields. You will encounter many picnicking art students who attend nearby Savannah College of Art.
Washington Square has some of the oldest houses in Savannah.
Whitefield Square is home to the oldest orphanage in the United States.
Morrell Park houses a statue of the waving girl (Florence Martus) who waved at the ships for 44 years. It also holds the 1996 Olympic flame.
Telfair Square is home to the Telfair Academy where the Bird Girl statute (Little Wendy) can be seen. The original home was in the very gothic Bonaventure Cemetery but it had to be moved when it hit the big time in a photograph that adorned the book cover of the John Berendt novel Midnight in a Garden of Good and Evil.
Another popular walk is along the cobblestone streets along the waterfront. The buildings once housed cotton warehouses but today you can browse a local bounty of tourist shops, restaurants and the old city market. Gazing across the water you will see steamboats of the past blasting ragtime music and carrying visitors floating side-by-side with tankers of today on their way to one of the busiest ports in the United States.
If you are up for communing with the nature there is hiking, biking and camping very close drive away at Skidaway Island State Park. We stayed at this wonderful campground which offers moss-covered oaks shading the large campsites a playground and numerous hikes through wetlands, salt marshes. The view of the Intracostal Waterway is amazing and you just might stumble upon schools of fish and flocks of birds as we did.
