What's happening in Savannah this week?

Tuesday through Thursday, Savannah belongs to the people who live here. Before 10am the squares between Bay Street and Forsyth Park are quiet enough that you can hear the fountain in Lafayette Square over the cars on Abercorn Street, and we'd use those days for the sights that draw lines. Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room on West Jones Street serves lunch on weekdays only, 11am to 2pm, with fried chicken, collards and okra with tomatoes coming family-style to shared tables. The queue tends to start around 10am, and waiting in it is the honest price of a seat. Friday changes the city. By 6pm River Street and City Market fill with bachelorette groups, and the ballast-stone ramps down from Bay Street get loud and sticky with spilled frozen daiquiri. The Historic District allows drinks on the street in plastic cups of up to 16 ounces, so the noise follows people from bar to bar until about 2am.

Saturday morning has the week's one fixed appointment: the Forsyth Farmers' Market, 9am to 1pm at the south end of Forsyth Park. You'll smell boiled peanuts and fresh coffee before you see the tents, so get there at 9am, buy a pastry, and walk north under the live oaks to the fountain. Sunday is slower. The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist on Lafayette Square holds Mass through the morning, so save its interior for a weekday, when the stained glass is quieter and you won't be walking through a service. Congregation Mickve Israel on Monterey Square, founded in 1733, keeps the Saturday Sabbath, and its tours tend to run on weekdays. On Sundays after 10am, the brunch wait at The Collins Quarter on Bull Street can run to 45 minutes.

This week's weather is the best reason to come now. Monday afternoon hit a clear 17.8°C with 60% humidity, which counts as crisp in Savannah, and on days like that the Spanish moss hangs dry and papery rather than damp. Autumn afternoons here still tend to reach the mid-20s Celsius, so plan the long walks (Jones Street, Forsyth Park, the bluff along Bay Street) between 9am and noon, and save 2pm onward for indoor stops. Of the three Telfair Museums sites, the Jepson Center on Telfair Square is the best air-conditioned afternoon pick, and the SCAD Museum of Art on Turner Boulevard is 10 minutes' walk west of it. Autumn is also peak season for Savannah's ghost tours, so book weekend evening tours several days ahead: they sell out.

With a free weekday, drive about 25 minutes east on US-80 to Fort Pulaski National Monument on Cockspur Island, where Union rifled cannon breached the brick walls in 1862 and the shell craters are still in the masonry. Tybee Island is about 10 minutes beyond it, and in autumn its beach is close to empty midweek. Back downtown, the free Savannah Belles Ferry crosses the river to Hutchinson Island from the Waving Girl and City Hall landings, and the free DOT Express Shuttle loops the Historic District, so you won't need a car downtown. Savannah rates 8.2/10 for family friendliness (see the TTDI Family-Friendliness Index). The Ghost Pirates hockey season has started, and on Friday and Saturday nights the crowds head west to Enmarket Arena, which makes parking around West Gwinnett Street hard to find after 6pm.