What cultural etiquette should I know for Savannah?

Hot sugar from the praline shops on River Street scents the air by mid-morning, and that waterfront is where most first-timers meet Savannah's go-cup ordinance, usually getting it wrong in both directions. Bartenders on Congress Street will pour a half-finished pint into a plastic cup if you ask at the door, and nobody notices when you carry it across Johnson Square. River Street is different: Savannah police patrol its uneven cobblestones heavily on weekend nights, and glass is usually what they stop people for. Skip the River Street frozen-drink stands, which are the tourist trap of the riverfront, and fill your go-cup at a Congress Street bar where locals drink. The legal zone covers the Historic District, roughly from the Savannah River south to Jones Street, and if you carry that cup deep into Forsyth Park, you might be outside the zone. The cup rule has never made public drunkenness legal. A loud bachelorette party weaving down Bay Street at 1am, past candy shops that have long since shut, is the scene locals complain about most.

Sidewalk manners come second. Savannah still has 22 of its original squares, and in the quieter ones, like Chippewa Square, dog walkers out at 8am will look you in the eye and say 'mornin'.' Say it back, because in Savannah ignoring a greeting reads as rude, not as big-city privacy. Restaurant service in Savannah is slower than in Atlanta, and that is deliberate: at Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room you sit at shared tables with strangers and pass bowls of fried chicken, okra and red rice; the sweet tea is sweet enough to coat your teeth, and by tradition diners carry their own plates to the kitchen at the end. One pronunciation wins locals over right away: Savannahians say Pulaski as 'puh-LASS-key,' both for the Casimir Pulaski Monument and for Fort Pulaski out on Cockspur Island.

Most of the facades you photograph in the Historic District belong to people who live there, not to any museum. Sitting on the iron-railed stoop of a Gaston Street townhouse for a photo, or pressing your face to a parlor window on Gordon Street, may earn you a sharp knock on the glass from inside. Ghost tours run until around 11pm, and residents have complained to City Hall about tour noise for years, so when your guide stops outside a house, keep your group quiet and listen instead to the carriage horses on the brick. Colonial Park Cemetery on Oglethorpe Avenue locks its gates in the evening, and climbing the wall after hours for a photo counts as trespassing. Hockey crowds leaving Enmarket Arena on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October will add late-night foot traffic on the west side of downtown, so book an earlier tour those two nights.