Savannah Travel Guide
Three Days in Savannah
The itinerary that matches the city's pace — trolley-and-squares sequencing, house-museum mornings, the riverfront's two visits, ghost-tour night placement, and the Bonaventure-Wormsloe-Tybee day that completes the low country.
Savannah rewards unhurried sequencing: the district is compact, the pleasures are rhythmic (squares, porches, long lunches, lamplit evenings), and the trip fails only when rushed. Three days covers the essential city and its low-country ring if mornings start early, afternoons respect the heat, and evenings are booked for the dark.
Before you fly. Light bookings, heavy rewards: reserve the ghost tour (October weeks sell out entirely), the dinner-tier restaurants (The Grey, Husk-tier rooms go a month out in season), and spring/October hotels months ahead — St. Patrick's week is its own economy. The trolley, museums, and riverboat walk up outside festivals; Bonaventure and the squares are free and unbookable. Pack flat shoes for cobbles and ballast stone; the district punishes heels.
Day one — the district installed. Begin at 9am with the trolley's full 90-minute loop from the visitor center — geography and story installed in one ride — then hop to City Market for lunch and the Prohibition Museum's galleries, finishing in the speakeasy as the afternoon softens. Walk Bull Street's spine south square by square (Johnson's obelisk to Chippewa's Gump site to Madison's ironwork), ending in Forsyth Park for the fountain at golden hour — the city's portrait slot. Dinner in the district, then night one's main event: the Ghosts & Gravestones trolley or a small-group walking tour — the dark layer installs best on the first night, and every square reads differently after. Nightcap on a lamplit square with a legal to-go cup, because Savannah.
Day two — interiors and the river. House-museum morning: the Davenport House on the hour (the staircase and the preservation story) paired with the Owens-Thomas two squares over, with Lafayette Square's cathedral between — twenty minutes under the gold stars at the midday glass. Lunch on Broughton or at the market. Afternoon: River Street properly — Factors Walk's bridges down, pralines warm off the marble, ship-spotting from the east-end park — then the riverboat's golden-hour sightseeing cruise for the skyline the street cannot see itself. Evening: Plant Riverside's turbine hall and geode museum (free, dinosaur included) with the rooftop-bar sunset, or the quiet version — the cathedral's spires at dusk from Lafayette's fountain bench, dinner at the inn-district tables.
Day three — the low-country ring. This is the car-or-rideshare day, sequenced west to east: Wormsloe's oak avenue at opening (fog and gold through the vault — the trip's photograph), Isle of Hope's Bluff Drive five minutes on, then Bonaventure Cemetery before noon — two hours among Mercer's bench, Gracie's shrine, and the bluff's angels. Lunch options fork by afternoon plan: the Crab Shack's marsh sprawl en route to a Tybee half day (lighthouse climb, pier shrimp basket, north-beach ship-watching), or back to the district for the missed museums and a final Forsyth hour. Final evening: the dinner that earned its booking, a last lamplit square walk, and — if the trip runs to a fourth morning — the Saturday Forsyth farmers market as the farewell.
The honest adjustments. Summer: invert everything — squares and cemeteries at dawn, museums and speakeasy middays, the riverfront after five; the heat is real and the itinerary above runs 7am starts. With kids: swap the house museums for the Pirates Museum, add the riverboat's daytime run, and make day three fully Tybee (Pulaski fort included). October: book literally everything weeks ahead — it is high season for exactly the reasons you're coming. And in every version, defend the unscheduled hour on a square bench: Savannah's actual product is the pace, and the itinerary exists to protect it, not fill it.