weather proof | 6 nights | from $2,120 per person
Charleston and Savannah Vacation Package, Six Nights by Car
Two southern cities, six nights, one car between them. This is a Charleston and Savannah vacation package where rain costs you an afternoon and July heat costs you rather more than that.
What weather proof means here
Rain here is a scheduling problem, not a trip problem. Both cities are flat, dense and full of rooms with roofs on them: house museums, a covered market, kitchens, a reading room, three blocks of galleries. A wet afternoon moves you indoors and costs you an hour of walking. It does not cost you the week.
Two things on this itinerary do need conditions. They are named below, with how often they go wrong.
- What the weather can cancel
- One evening harbor sail and the two guided street walks. Lightning cancels the sail outright; the walks still run in rain, but not under a heat advisory, when they move to the 8 am slot instead.
- How often it actually happens
- Both cities log 12 to 14 thunderstorm days in July and again in August. Across six nights in high summer that means two or three afternoons broken up, and roughly one sail in five called off for lightning within 10 miles of the water.
- What you do instead
- The sail moves to the next clear evening you have left, and on a six night trip that is often the final one. The walks start at 8 am rather than 5 pm, or the afternoon goes to the house museums and the covered market, which are open in any weather and already paid for.
- What money comes back
- None from us, because we never hold your money. The sail operator returns its own fare or issues its own credit under its own terms, usually inside 30 days. Rooms, car, timed entries and booked tables are paid whether the sky cooperates or not.
- Who should not book this
- Anyone who does not tolerate heat well. From June to September the afternoon heat index holds above 100F for four or five hours at a stretch, and this trip is covered on foot. If your day has to happen between noon and 4 pm in July, choose another month or another coast.
The fourth row is the one this trade prints smallest, and on most of these trips it says nothing comes back. It stands above the price deliberately.
What the $2,120 pays for
- Six nights inside the two historic districts, four in one city and two in the other, on two people sharing
- A car for five days, collected and returned in the same city, with parking held within four blocks of both places you sleep
- Timed entry to five house museums and two walled gardens, booked before you land, because same-day tickets in April and October are gone by 10 am
- Two guided street walks of about two hours, one per city, with the earliest slot held as a heat fallback
- One evening harbor sail of roughly 90 minutes
- Tables at four kitchens, two of which release reservations 30 days out and fill the same morning
- Written directions for the 110 mile drive between the cities, including which bridge to avoid at 5 pm
What you pay for separately
- Getting to the country, and reaching either city from wherever you fly into. Flights are priced on their own and are not inside this figure
- Every meal except the four booked tables, and every drink
- Fuel, tolls and any parking you take outside the two held spaces
- Entry to buildings you add on the day, and anything bought inside the houses
- Travel insurance, which is not arranged here and not sold here
What it costs
from $2,120 per person
- Covering
- 6 nights, two-city road trip on the southern coast, walked rather than driven.
- Taken as read
- A room shared between two, except where any of the six otherwise for your case.
- What lifts it
- A crowded month, a better room, a decision left late, and every hour you hand to somebody else to arrange.
- When it stops moving
- The moment an operator signs its own name under it. Before that, read it as the floor of a spread this desk has actually seen.
You settle with the operator, through whatever system they run. Not a cent of it passes through here, and this office never sees a card.
Months that work, months that fight you
Late March into the first half of May is the strongest run. Highs sit between 72 and 82F, rain falls on 7 or 8 days of the month and usually clears inside an hour, and both gardens are open with everything in flower. Late October and November bring the same weather with fewer people in it, though the light goes by 5:30 pm and one walk will finish in the dark.
June through September is the real cost of a Charleston and Savannah vacation package. July delivers around 6.5 inches of rain across 13 days, nearly all of it in afternoon thunderstorms lasting 30 to 60 minutes, and the heat index holds above 100F from noon until four. Nothing closes. You simply stop wanting to be outside, and this is a trip you walk.
The weeks I talk people out of are the last two of July, the first of August, and anything inside the second week of September, which sits in the middle of Atlantic storm season. A named storm rarely lands on you, but a coastal watch will close a bridge, empty a district and put you in a car heading inland with everything already paid for.
What is settled once your dates are fixed
Four things get decided at confirmation and not before: which city takes the four nights and which takes the two, whether the car appears on day one or day three so you are not paying to leave it parked, the start times of both walks against that week's forecast, and which evening the sail goes on, which is placed last because it is the single line a storm can take.