Planning Our 2020 Anniversary (Road) Trip to Savannah, Georgia

In late February, Tyler and I booked open jaw flights into Portland, Oregon, and out of Seattle, Washington. Even though we had just cancelled our March trip to Shanghai (and fortunately, gotten our money back) due to coronavirus, we felt confident that the travel situation would be better come the end of July. We had flights, hotels and a train scheduled for us to finally get away and be able to celebrate our anniversary.

Whelp, here we are in July, and we know that at least in the US, things aren’t really better. Our trip to Portland and Seattle was officially cancelled last week, after so many components of the trip started to fall through. It started a few weeks ago with one hotel cancelling our stay because they wouldn’t actually be open until August (so we rebooked at a new spot), but it ended with a combo plane and train cancellation that we couldn’t justify pushing through. Clearly, we weren’t meant to go on this trip this year, but that left us scrambling a bit: what could we do to celebrate our anniversary?

We had to go back to the drawing board and really evaluate what it is we were looking for during our anniversary trip, combined with what we thought we’d actually be able to do based on the current restrictions in place. We decided that 1) it made sense to limit our destinations to places we could easily drive to, to avoid flying (and flight cancellations) in the age of coronavirus, as well as 2) we wanted to prioritize staying in at least a four-star hotel, as we assumed we’d be spending a lot of time there.

After several days of hotel research, we narrowed it down to these three hotels:

• The Don Cesar, located in St. Pete Beach, Florida.
• Pelican Grand Beach Resort, located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• The Kimpton Brice Hotel, located in Savannah, Georgia. 

All of these hotels are quite lovely and seem to have great cleaning and social distancing practices in place, but we ultimately decided on The Kimpton Brice Hotel because we can explore a new city in a “new” state (we haven’t been to Georgia since we were kids), they allow up to two dogs to stay with you for free, and they have some great deals available for booking right now. Compared to the other hotels, we’re easily saving at least $400 on our stay, not counting the money we no longer have to spend on our dog-sitter.

We still made the slightly-more-expensive-but-refundable hotel reservation – we weren’t feeling that ballsy, considering everything else that has happened – but we’re feeling pretty good about driving up to Savannah later this month! It’s not the anniversary trip we imagined, but if we know anything after almost three years married (and almost 11 together), it’s that the best laid plans… often go awry.

Please share your recommendations for the oldest city in Georgia, because so far, we know we should eat at B. Matthew’s, and we could take a ferry to Hilton Head, South Carolina. If you have dog-friendly suggestions, even better. 🙂