Background
On this particular road trip we traveled in a motorhome, our own, from St. Petersburg, Florida to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania and toured along the way up and down. This story represents our first stop on the first day of this 14 day journey.
Brunswick, Georgia
As you know, if you’ve read any of my blog posts related to travel, we like to get off the exit if traveling on the interstates for our breaks. There are many reasons for this but the primary ones are seeing the country and the other is supporting local businesses (not that businesses at the exits are all corporate or that there isn’t historically interesting things there). So this is really just to encourage you to get off the expressway, discover and hopefully return for a longer stay.
Brunswick is not far off the I-95, maybe five or ten minutes, so you have no excuse not to pop in there some time. It is a charming old town with some history. There was a time when a drive by Brunswick made you hold your nose from the smell of the paper factories. Today, thanks probably to the EPA, the town is pleasant and smells more of ocean spray than anything else.
Coming in to town from the expressway, you’re quickly greeted downtown by the jail. But there are some blocks beyond that that are quite interesting and enjoyable actually. Downtown Brunswick won’t wow you but will give you a feeling of comfort. There are a series of squares in the town (think Savannah on a very small scale) that are scattered throughout the downtown – which quite honestly is rather small so don’t be disappointed. It nonetheless is charming in its own right.
Most of what you’ll want to see is on Newcastle Street. It is a great place to unpack your bicycle and have a ride around the town. There are shops and restaurants and some interesting historic buildings. There’s an old theater (The Ritz) that has been re-purposed and saved – always a sign of a good community – into an arts and theatrical center. There are also events downtown such as First Friday. On our trip we happened upon Tipsy McSway’s on Newcastle Street.
It looked an interesting neighborhood sort of bar and restaurant. The type of place that you’d become a regular if you lived here. So we stopped in and had a delicious meal. There’s indoor and outdoor seating and the place serves many purposes it seems from sports pub to a place for women who lunch to meet. It was also dog-friendly and LGBT-friendly if you have to single anything out. I probably would just call it friendly!
You can view a detailed map of downtown Brunswick here or if you’re travelling with an RV, as we were, you can easily park downtown and walk a short ways or ride your bicycles. We walked this time and it was very easy. There’s plenty to do in the area but we were just stopping enroute to other adventures. We hope to return to St. Simons Island nearby to experience that as well as Jekyll Island too as this is all part of the region known as the Golden Isles of Georgia. #GoldenIslesGA
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