Welcome to another week of life on the road. I’m Genie Leslie, a freelance writer working remotely and traveling the country with my husband.
This week, we’re in Charleston, enjoying beaches and kayaking.
Charleston is just two hours away from Savannah, Georgia. We’ve already established that our Charleston Airbnb is not the most comfortable, so when faced with a long weekend, Aaron and I decided to take a short vacation in Savannah.
(Can you just hear the accent? I can’t say or type “Savannah” without hearing a molasses-style drawl.)
We hurried out the door last minute on a Friday, in hopes of beating any rush hour traffic, and instead we ran into people-from-Charleston-headed-to-the-beach traffic. But we made it all the same.
Traveling is teaching me so many more details about geography than I ever actually picked up in any school classes. I had no idea that Savannah was so close to the state line that you basically cross into the state of the Georgia and the city of Savannah at the exact same time. Or that Savannah and Charleston are both farther south than my hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. The more you know, I guess.
Since this trip was pretty spontaneous, we just snagged a hotel room that looked nice without much thought. And we didn’t know anything about the city, so the fact that the hotel was “in the Historic District” and “on the water” just sounded cool.
Little did we know, the northern Historic District and the waterfront are the biggest tourist attractions of the whole city. The waterfront is full of shops, restaurants, and vendors; boat tours, trolley tours, and horse-drawn carriage tours. And then, from the waterfront well into the Historic District is all an open-container zone, meaning you can get a drink at a bar and take it with you. Walk along the sidewalk, venture into the small parks in one of the several town squares, wherever.
For my Seattleites, it’s like if you were to venture into Seattle knowing absolutely nothing and end up staying smack dab in the middle of Pike Place Market. But way drunker.
We went out to eat that first night at a jazz bar—though because we didn’t have a reservation, we weren’t seated downstairs in the dark, chilly area around the stage. No, no; we were upstairs, in a brightly lit room with a TV playing a live feed from the stage. But that was all right. The food (shrimp and grits for me, something with redfish for him, I think) was absolutely delicious. There’s nothing like seafood in a coastal city. We live for it.
We walked around a bit that night, drinking our obligatory outdoor drinks and scoping out the scene. It felt a bit like being back on the Oxford square after a home football game, or in Nashville the night that both Trevor Noah and Taylor Swift were in town. Young, drunk people everywhere.
The next day, we took advantage of being in a hotel and took a morning swim in the pool. Where do people find swimming pools these days? We don’t stay anywhere long enough to do any kind of pool membership. Anyway, swimming felt great, and we decided to hit the waterfront after that.
Well, I think we underestimated the Savannah heat and direct sunlight, and how well they don’t mix with day drinking and lots of walking. It was not too long before I was tired and hangry. (It doesn’t help that my traveling wardrobe doesn’t currently include shorts, so I was inappropriately dressed for the heat.)
Eventually, we wandered into a weird little museum called The Graveface Museum. We knew it was going to be a dark and macabre museum. But we didn’t really know how dark until we were inside.
It started fine. Taxidermy of real animals that all had some sort of natural mutation: a cow with five legs, a rodent with two heads, that kind of thing. We learned about a man who used to make and sell fake shrunken heads.
Then we moved into a room that talked about the Church of Satan and its founder. This was interesting to me—I mean, I didn’t know the history of any of this and maybe didn’t even know the Church of Satan was a real thing. So I was intrigued to read about it. But then, there was a wall that included several pictures of a 1970s celebrity, with text about how she’d been rumored to be a part of the church and maybe even in an affair with its founder.
Here’s where I got uncomfortable. I mean, it’s not that I was under any illusions that this was a rigorous institution with fact checkers (or copyeditors, since I’d already seen a few typos). But using the image and name of a well-known star with nothing but a few rumors about her connection felt icky to me. And it did not get better after that.
After we passed through a room that mentioned Charles Manson and OJ Simpson, and used what looked a real crime scene photo for each, we entered into a room all about serial killers, with about 70% of it dedicated to paintings John Wayne Gacy did while on Death Row. Aaron and I started to feel gross. We decided it was time to head back out into the sun.
On Sunday, we wanted to see the non-tourist sections of the city. And we’d found out that a friend from Seattle had recently moved to Savannah too. We got lunch with her while she picked our brains about travel (and we picked hers, too, as she’s also moved around in the past couple of years). Then we all went to Forsyth Park to walk her two dogs and check out one of the city’s biggest green spaces.
It was all really lovely. The park, the old architecture surrounding it, the fountains. Lovely. Except for the bugs. All weekend long, we’d been absolutely inundated with tiny little bugs hovering around our faces and eyes. They were obnoxious, they were impossible to kill, and they were ever-present. Aaron finally looked it up and they’re called sand gnats. And they seem to be specific to Savannah. They drove us insane. One night, as we waited for our restaurant table outside in the heat, we basically had to stop talking to each other because we were just so annoyed with the bugs we couldn’t see straight.
Still, it was great to see a familiar face and get an insider’s (even a new insider’s) take on the city. We walked more, we popped into a local ice cream shop + art gallery + store for local creators and I left with two new pairs of earrings. We drove around and discovered that Charleston is not the only southern city with an insane and confusing number of one-way streets. Savannah wins the crown there.
On Monday, we checked out of the hotel and drove back to Charleston. We had all of Monday afternoon and evening to relax, and honestly, we were wiped out. Getting out into this heat day in and day out really takes it out of you. And, as our friend brilliantly put it, Seattle has made us delicate.
We’ll have to build up our stamina if we end up settling in the south somewhere.
What else is going on?
The Bear season 2 is out now on Hulu! If you haven’t started this show yet, I promise, it’s amazing.
We rented kayaks and paddled around Shem Creek, Bayview Creek, and Hog Island Channel. It was a blast. We saw dolphins!! Kayaking is absolutely becoming our favorite thing to do in a new place and an activity we want to continue.
We all know I love talking about money. So of course I watched all 8 episodes of How To Get Rich on Netflix. The title is total clickbait and terrible, but the show is actually interesting. If you like talking about money, and if you think that money conversations should also take into considerations personal priorities and your personal relationship to money (like the psychology behind it), this show might be for you. (He still doesn’t get into the inequities of the whole financial system, unfortunately.)
A heads up: this week, I’m participating in a writers retreat from Thursday-Monday. So if I’m too in the screenwriting zone (and I hope I will be!), I might skip the newsletter next week.