This week, we released the Savannah crossbody camera bag, our fourth new style of the year. Named after Savannah, Georgia—our favorite walking city in the U.S.—it is designed as an elegant, lightweight way to protect your camera and everyday items for a full day of exploring. To inspire your own adventures, below are a few reasons we love Savannah.
Downtown historic Savannah is built around 22 historic squares; you could see them all in a morning jog. Each is filled with historic homes and churches and dotted with an eclectic mix of restaurants, boutiques, antique stores, museums, and as many good portrait locations as Central Park. Here, an Australian café torn from Melbourne. There, the birthplace of Flannery O’Connor, one of the finest American writers, within blocks of two excellent local bookstores (an unfortunately rare thing in 2017). In between, Southern cuisine that enthralls, without the hype of neighboring Charleston.
While part of the charm of Savannah is stumbling on your own favorite spots, here are a few of ours to get you started:
1. Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD): A trump card over any other historic city, SCAD is an exciting, modern institution housed largely within Savannah’s centuries-old architecture that infuses the entire city. Two must-visit destinations: the Museum of Art—contemporary in its design and collections—and the ShopSCAD store of largely student-designed art and goods. And then there’s the Gryphon Tea Room (below right), which serves tea to visiting parents and art dealers in a historic 1920's building filled with idiosyncratic modern flourishes.
2. The Olde Pink House: A downtown institution reminiscent of New Orlean’s Commander’s Palace in how its abundant rooms, settings, and charm allow it to be both a local favorite and tourist culinary destination. The menu is reverent, indulgent Southern standards; after dinner, find a spot close to the piano in the dark cellar tavern.
3. The Grey & The Florence: Two new restaurants in gorgeously re-envisioned historic spaces – an old Greyhound depot and an ice cream factory, respectively. The chef of the Grey, Mashama Bailey, returned to her hometown to open the restaurant; her sublime cuisine references lowcountry cooking while turning heads with ingredients you won’t see on another menu in town. The Florence, from James Beard Award-winning chef Hugh Acheson, cooks local ingredients with Italian technique (and has an excellent coffee bar and Instagram account to make you miss that garganelli hundreds of miles away).
4. Alex Raskin Antiques: This mansion-as-storefront is not a good place for a reasonably priced diamond-in-the-rough find (for that, try Jere’s near the river). Alex Raskin is where you come for history, floors and floors of it, mostly expensive and stacked and packed together almost to prevent you from enjoying too much in one visit. Across the square is the Mercer-Williams House, where you can’t technically take photos but can see an infamous and singularly eclectic home, adorned with pieces that make even those at Alex Raskin blush.
5. Leopold’s Ice Cream: Because ice cream. Two years away from its centennial celebration, Leopold's attracts a line out the door on most any day that the sun is out.
Shop the Savannah bag, and share your favorite places and see others' with #whereONAgoes on Instagram.