Saturday in Savannah

Charleston and Savannah should be similar. They are both river mouth(ish) ports, both were established at about the same time, by the British settlers. They are no more than 100 miles apart. they have both been rebuilt several times. They have the same climate, they are both built on flat land (well Savannah almost is). Yet they are completely different.

Charleston grew organically, building outwards from a small walled town, always conscious that it was on a peninsula and land would always be at a premium. Savannah appears to have been built to a plan. It has a layout that, like a crystal lattice, ensures that the city is timeless and tranquil. Charleston is normal, it is Savannah that is strange. Instead of basing the town on the normal central crossroads, with a town square and roads parallel to the main thoroughfares its civic leaders laid out a matrix of about 30 small squares, each no more than 60 yards on each side. Each square is laid out with trees or gardens, each is surrounded by a road, houses, shops, banks, churches and civic buildings are built around he squares. The squares are about 100 yards from each other and are linked to the next by narrow roads. The effect of this is that even with the advent of the car you cannot move rapidly through the town, you have to keep negotiating these squares, driving round them to continue on the road of your choice. Every 100 yards, in any direction, you will come to a cool, shady, square, which you can walk through, or sit in, as you wish. There are, to be fair, a number of through roads which are threaded between the squares, but the feel of the place is dominated by the squares. We spent several hours wandering from square to square, each one different, each one surrounded by historic buildings. It was clean and tidy, a great pleasure to be in. I was reminded of the the nicer back streets of Paris, or Amsterdam.
On Saturday,when we first arrived we took a trolley ride to get ourselves oriented, no more carriages after the Charleston experience (just as well as it poured with rain half-way round the tour). This was great fun and very informative.