In Savannah to tape an episode of her newest series, Travel Channel star Samantha Brown spends an afternoon with The South discussing what it’s like to have one of the world’s best jobs.

Typically, when people first ride in my dusty, dirty ‘96 Toyota station wagon, I’ve known them for a while. They’re familiar enough with me to excuse the broken air conditioning, crumpled pages of Googlemapped directions, gum wrappers and piles of fast-food napkins stowed hastily atop the center console. But when I ushered Samantha Brown across Bull Street and to the dinged door of my car that warm, windless day, I worried that she and I didn’t know each other well enough for the ride.

Yet, after she reached behind her for the seatbelt, politely not noticing the mild smell of stale coffee and hot vinyl, my fears were quickly diminished. She was laidback and smiling, cracking a window and scanning the oak-lined street ahead.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that Samantha Brown, Travel Channel starlet, would take in stride being stuck in a stifling station wagon with a nervous reporter.

As a television personality known for her perky demeanor and sustained enthusiasm, she is a woman whose tireless graciousness may be a small price to pay for one of the best jobs in the world.

As a profession, Brown travels 230 days a year, touring the world accompanied by a camera crew and a legion of doting followers living vicariously through her from the comfort of their own couches. A New Hampshire native, Brown began a career in musical theater before being tapped by the Travel Channel nearly a decade ago. She has since hosted a slew of critically and viewer acclaimed series for the network, including Passport to Europe, Great Hotels, Great Vacation Homes and Passport to Latin America. In each episode, Brown can be seen with her characteristic broad smile, exuberantly touring beautiful hotel rooms, fearlessly winding her way through crowded foreign streets and enveloping herself in the customs and culture of her host city. Her most recent project, Passport to Great American Weekends, has her Stateside visiting some of our country’s most interesting cities and towns—including Savannah and Charleston, which share an episode set to air May 9.

It was this show that brought Samantha Brown to Savannah and to the stuffy interior of my car. That afternoon, on a break from taping, we met for an interview.

With that complete, it was my assignment to safely drive her to a photo shoot at a train station several miles away. I told myself that this was a rare and exciting opportunity to be the tour guide in the city I love for one of the world’s most prolific travelers.

But then I got lost. I had never been to that train station before, and while she discreetly dabbed the sweat from her forehead, I had to pull over three times to call for directions from the waiting photographer. My embarrassment compounded by the continued squealing of my brakes, I finally found the location, then watched Brown pose skillfully in front of the camera before I put her back in the station wagon for a ride to her hotel.

Awkward as the situation was for this reporter, Brown’s patience and kindness never quit. Throughout the ride, she chatted about local politics and the best places in Savannah to shop. When I dropped her off on Broughton Street, she paused before opening the door. At first I thought that she was bracing herself for the humiliation of climbing out of my car. Instead, she thanked me for my time, kissed me on the cheek and wished me luck before confidently stepping out into the throngs of pedestrians, many of whom recognized her immediately and moved in her direction. The last I saw of her, Samantha Brown was smiling widely as she signed an autograph for a middle-aged woman near tears from excitement.

Driving home, still blushing slightly, I reasoned that the casual, go-with-the-flow attitude Samantha Brown exhibited throughout the torturous station wagon ride wasn’t a shallow celebrity act or even mere politeness— it was a perfect example of what makes her a great traveler. Rather than getting upset and anxious when the unexpected or unpleasant happens, Brown rolls with the punches and uses the situation as an opportunity to gain a new perspective on her surroundings. It’s the same tactic she employs on her show when it starts raining on an outdoor excursion or right after she’s put a questionably tasty item of local cuisine in her mouth. It’s Brown’s ability to turn a bad situation good that makes her so much fun to watch.

Samantha Brown offered up a few more items of traveling wisdom when we sat down at the Gryphon Tea Room on Bull Street to discuss life on the road and her thoughts on the great Hostess City.

The South magazine: Tell me about the episode of Passport to Great American Weekends you’re working on here in Savannah.

Samantha Brown: The episode is actually about Charleston and Savannah. We started in Charleston and ended with Savannah, and the theme—each Weekend show has a

theme to it, so it all ties together—the theme for this one is “Sam faces her fears down South.” I’m so scared to be on a horse, so in Charleston, we did a fox hunt. Well it was a drag hunt, not a real fox hunt because I would not do that. It was nuts! In Savannah, we’re staying at the Kehoe House, which is beautiful and, of course, it’s haunted, which is a fear. I also did my fear of bees, so we went to the Savannah Bee Company!

TSM: What’s been your favorite part of the city so far?

SB: The thing I was the most excited about in Savannah was to go to the bar The Jinx and do Rock and Roll Bingo. That was great! I mean, in every single travel show you’ve ever seen about Savannah, it’s always about the genteelness, the Southerness of it. No one knows that there are people here tattooed from head to foot. Whenever people ask me, ‘What should I do in this city?’ I’m like, do something that takes you out of your comfort zone. Take yourself to a place full of people that you don’t normally get to meet and just talk to them. I guess my whole general feeling of travel is that it allows us to talk more to people. I just think that for me, what makes travel absolutely special, is just the people in the destination that give you a side of that destination that you’re never going to find on a tour, never going to find on a website—you just gotta be there. I like when people watch the show and say, ‘I would never have done that, but because you went there, I feel like I could go there.’ Good! Get yourself to The Jinx and saddle yourself up to the most dangerous person you’ve ever seen in your life, because they’re absolute sweethearts.

TSM: Okay, I’ve got to give you a little trouble for covering both Savannah and Charleston in the same episode. There are people in both cities that might argue that we deserve two separate shows.

SB: I know! I know! If it was my choice, it would’ve been. We could have easily done an episode in Charleston and an episode in Savannah. That choice was not mine, and certainly not something I wanted to do. [There’s a] difference between the two [cities], because Charleston certainly has its characters, but Savannah just has that fringe element that I like. It’s kind of like, what Austin is to Texas, Savannah is to Georgia. It’s an anomaly. It’s sort of like your own independent state here, and I like that; I like that spontaneity here. Charleston is beautiful and just a little more conservative.

TSM: Well, we forgive you. Do you find that Savannah lives up to its Hostess City name?

SB: Oh absolutely! Everyone here says ‘Welcome to Savannah!’ and everyone has gone out of their way to be like, ‘Oh what are you doing?’ and ‘If you want to do this, come by.’ My favorite restaurant here is B. Matthews and I’ve eaten there everyday. So while sitting there, one of the professors at SCAD came up to me, and he invited me to a big open house tonight with the students, and I love that. You have friends everywhere.

TSM: So, you hear daily that you have the best job in the world— but what are the downsides to traveling so often?

SB: I do get very tired and that’s why people and my connection with them are vital to me. When we were doing [Passport to Europe], we’d be gone for a month at a time. After a while, it became very hard to be away that long, and so monuments and museums started to lose their allure and power for me, so I started to go towards neighborhoods. Normal, everyday neighborhoods. I didn’t want to see any tourists, because tourists made me feel alone. So I naturally gravitated toward where people live and really just started opening up myself for people to get an idea of their experience. It soothed me.

TSM: What is the best piece of advice you can offer an aspiring world traveler?

SB: What I would say, especially if you travel abroad to like say China or even Europe, make sure you spend time in someone’s everyday. Don’t just check things off the list, because someone’s everyday is your extraordinary. Just to get a sense of how they live, make sure you spend at least one day being in a neighborhood that’s not touristy.

Then you see how we’re similar— which is pretty exciting—but also how we’re different and how that difference is something that should be celebrated.

Watch it!

Check out the Savannah/Charleston episode of Passport to Great American Weekends, currently set to air May 9 on the Travel Channel. See your local listings for more details.