As she handed me the keys to my room overlooking the garden at The Inn at 909 Lincoln, my hostess ushered me into the historic and well-appointed sitting room to offer me some travel tips for my three-day weekend in the Garden City. "A trolley tour is a good way to start your stay. Try Savannah Dan, here's a brochure. Do you like historic houses?" She pulled out a map and started marking it up. "Here's the Owens-Thomas House...and the Juliette Gordon Low House..." "Mmmm..." I murmured. "Yes, lovely."
I didn't tell her that I had already been to those places, and that as a weekend refugee from Atlanta, what I really want is to find a nice quiet sepulchre to lie down in for a nap. Then I want to bounce on my bed, have a long, slow delicious bath that smells like the jasmine outside, and a stroll in Forsyth Park. I want to have a cocktail at the Velvet Elvis, look up the Lady Chablis and see if s/he is still "hiding her candy" and drop in on Paula Deen for dinner. I want to sit in shady squares, people watch, contemplate the Spanish moss that hangs from the branches of the live oaks overhead. I want to lose myself in the soothing coastal accents that swirl around me, the narrow brick-lined streets, the human scale of the place. That I want to happen upon Johnny Mercer's house (two doors down), not follow a map to it, and sing "Skylark" under my breath for the rest of the day. I want to wander, I want to be surprised, delighted, in small things, and pretend I am the only one who knows about them.
There is an old joke that runs something like this: "In Atlanta, if people want to get to know you, they ask you what you do for a living. In Macon, they ask what church you go to. In Augusta, they ask who your momma's family is. But in Savannah, they ask you Honey, what are you drinkin'?"
Ah, Savannah, my kind of town. Anytime. Mmmmm. Every time.
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