“People love to find little corner places,” Ginger Duncan observed the day I stumbled across her corner in Savannah.

This Georgia city near the sea just might have more corners than most since its blocks are filled with squares, old beautifully planted ones started in 1733.

Antique maps, prints and books fill Duncan’s interesting corners, a three-room collection of treasures for sale topped by the gracious two-story home she and her husband John share near Monterey Square.

“Monterey is Savannah’s prettiest square,” John says; “We waited and watched until a home was available. I knew this was the place for me to be.”

He’s a tall handsome man, exuding a kind of charm possible only with a twelfth generation Charleston heritage like his.

If you watched the movie “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” you’ll recognize him, voice and all, as the gentleman in the park. Ginger played one of the card club women.

I bought three antique maps, not because I knew I wanted them before arriving. I didn’t even know about this place or the Duncans when I left home.

My quest was discovering Savannah all over again---not the places touted by tourism professionals. Not the famous restaurants. None of the familiar trolley and walking tours this time.

I wanted to feel at home in the dizzying array of parks that I had driven and ridden around many times before, always confusing one with another, and I wanted to meet some neighbors who weren’t docents in historic homes.

The basics are great in Savannah and worth choosing, but this was a journey to pay attention to what had surely been right under my nose when I’d been enjoying the famous stuff.

I started by renting two nights in what felt like somebody’s house. Always had a hotel room before, often on the Savannah River, or a bed and breakfast inn.

Jeanne-Marie Everson and Geoffrey Albert have four half-houses plus a Carriage house to share, and another one ready for the last touchup of paint and polish that will sleep a dozen. They’re right across the street, or around the corner and down the block, from big, beautiful, busy Forsyth Park.

Traveling partner G. W. Tibbetts and I stayed in Upper Drayton, with a top floor view of the big park. Felt like neighbors, not tourists, being with people walking dogs in the park, cheering on the little kid football games and walking just a block to the coffee shop for breakfast one morning: $4.50 omelet for him, $2.50 granola with blueberries and yogurt for me.

Nobody else in the Sentient Bean looked like us; they were much younger, balancing cell phones and laptops while eating and somehow paying attention to people too. We wouldn’t have shared in that local culture in a big hotel breakfast room.

Self-indulgent vacationer role is possible too staying right inside one of Everson and Albert’s homes. Ask them to send Tiffany Kelly over for brunch; she’ll cook it for you right there. Personal chef for several hours.