Savannah - The Itinerary

In the end, I elected against giving the full list of my Savannah wants, mainly because I think it would make for boring reading.  Instead, I'll give a brief description of how I build my itinerary, and then, once I've returned from Savannah, you'll get the full scoop on everything.

First of all, as I've previously mentioned, I scour through books and various websites to find the things that interest me, and basically just make a laundry list of the stuff that sounds intriguing.  That includes scanning the restaurant and shopping listings as well, just so I start with as comprehensive of a listing as possible.  I think this is mainly driven by the fear that I might end up missing something.

I usually then start to group sights and places by area.  In Savannah, most things are pretty centrally located, so there's not too much to worry about from that standpoint.  However, I did have Tybee Island and Hilton Head as possible destinations as well, so those do get their own groupings.  Otherwise, for this trip at least, geography is really a limited challenge.  That said, I still try to identify places that are close together as I don't want to end up walking back and forth across the same area multiple times.

The next part is to try to identify themes or similarities in my list.  For Savannah, a couple of themes emerge pretty easily:  haunted Savannah, historic Savannah (houses and gardens), and coastal activities (Hilton Head/Tybee and other islands).  The question then becomes whether I'm overloading on one or another.  As an example, while I certainly would enjoy a tour of a historical home, there are multiple houses on the list.  Chances are that a couple would be enough (especially since I'm bringing the kids, and their tolerance for many more than that is going to be low).  While I don't eliminate anything at this stage, I do identify preferences, which simply means that I'm more interested in some places than others.

The final step is to take the groupings and actually put together the itinerary.  For me, this means first prioritizing the key focus items for the trip, and then creating a series of sights, proposed eating spots, and various stops which comprise a day's activity.  I start with adding a few sights, a lunch spot, afternoon activities (and usually an afternoon stop), and close with suggested dinnertime locations.  I then throw in a few other things that looked interesting that are in the area, included as options if there is time or energy.

You'll get to see the outcome over the next few posts.