Can I leave the airport on a layover in Savannah?

Our floor at SAV is five hours, and the arithmetic explains why. Allow 15 minutes to get off the plane and clear baggage claim, then add about 25 minutes each way along I-16 into downtown, and you should be back at the checkpoint 75 minutes before departure. Screening at SAV tends to take 10 to 20 minutes, but one late Delta or American bank can double that. That leaves close to two hours in the city. Taxis wait outside baggage claim, and Uber and Lyft use a signed rideshare zone. Fares to the Historic District run $30 to $40 before tip. Chatham Area Transit has run an airport express to the Joe Murray Rivers Jr. Intermodal Transit Center on Oglethorpe Avenue, but service is infrequent, so check the current CAT timetable before you rely on it. With less than five hours, we would stay in the terminal, because a missed connection costs far more than the cab fare saves.

Ask the driver to drop you at the fountain in Forsyth Park and walk north up Bull Street. The full route to the river is about 1.5 miles and takes 40 minutes at an easy pace, with live oaks hung with Spanish moss shading the path and the air carrying a faint smell of wet bark after a shower. In Monterey Square you pass Congregation Mickve Israel, whose congregation dates from 1733, and its Gothic Revival synagogue offers short guided visits on many weekdays. Two blocks east of Bull, the twin spires of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist rise over Lafayette Square, and that side trip adds ten minutes. At Broughton Street, Leopold's has been scooping ice cream since 1919, and the queue moves faster than it looks. Then take the steep ballast-stone ramps down to River Street. Those stones get slick when it rains, so wear shoes with grip. Container ships sound their horns as they slide under the Talmadge Memorial Bridge. Skip Fort Pulaski on this run. It is 45 minutes east of the airport on US-80, so save it for a layover of eight hours or more.

Eating alone is easy here. Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room on West Jones Street seats strangers together at shared tables for weekday lunch, so the line on the sidewalk starts forming before the 11am opening and the fried chicken and collards are worth the wait. The Grey, set in a 1938 Greyhound bus terminal on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, has a counter where solo diners get served without a reservation. If you want company, a 90-minute small-group walking tour leaving from Johnson Square or Chippewa Square usually charges per person, so there is no single supplement, and the whole thing fits inside a two-hour window. Savannah allows open drinks in plastic to-go cups of 16 ounces or less within the Historic District, so you can carry a drink from bar to square.

Savannah's solo-traveler safety score is 6.2/10 (see the TTDI Solo-Safety Index), and we think that number is fair, not alarmist. Bull Street, the riverfront and City Market stay busy until late, but a few blocks past East Broad Street or west of MLK Boulevard, foot traffic drops off after 10pm and car break-ins and occasional street robberies get reported along the district's edges. After 9pm, book a rideshare back to SAV from a lit square rather than walking to the Intermodal stop, and on weekend nights keep your daypack zipped on River Street, where pickpockets work the crowds. For evening layovers this week, there is a crowded option: Savannah Ghost Pirates hockey at Enmarket Arena on Friday 23 October. The forecast also favours walking, and Sunday 19 October was clear at 17.8°C.