Sweet Home Alabama's Gardens, Art, Literature Treasures

TRAVEL -- Sweet Home Alabama. Alabama’s Charming Small Towns and Downtowns Feel Like Home, Y’All, my feeling after terrific week touring the Mobile Bay area from Mobile to the Gulf Coast with eight other writers. My group also included terrific knowledgeable guides, especially Edith Parten and Bill Lang, and others who joined us along the way to explain and showcase their areas. We overdosed on great art, food, golf, food, spas, food: sweet tea, grits with cheese, turnip greens, friend crab claws, oysters, fried shrimp, fried anything it seemed! I toured for five days from Mobile, and Mobile Bay, to delightful downtowns and small towns; meeting sweet Alabamians from Fairhope, to Foley, to Monroeville, southern Alabama surprised and delighted my northern sensitivities.

Scenic roads, giant oaks, moss shrimp boats, estuaries, deltas, bayous, bays, rivers, and white sandy beaches. , My tour amazed by the 300 year old giant oaks draped with Spanish moss; the Victorian mansions, Creole cottages and Cajun houses, beautiful historic homes, antebellum Southern mansions, gardens, wrought iron fences, French and Spanish heritage, pocket parks, luxury hotels in the heart of downtown Mobile, delicious gourmet and down-home cooking and most of all, a gracious air of hospitality. It’s spring, and thousands of beautiful azaleas are in full bloom, creating a symphony of color and sweet aroma.

My first-ever Alabama tour lasted five days. A northerner, I’d never been to Alabama and so when friends skeptically asked me, “Why are you going? What’s down there?” I replied, “I’d find out and report.”

Now I know. And I can’t wait to return, visit my southern cousins, eat more pecan pie, fried crab claws, catfish, seafood gumbo and oysters at Wintzell’s Oyster House, dolphin rides in the Gulf Coast, strolls along historic Dauphin Street, and Foley and Fairhope’s’ festivals. Enjoyed gracious southern hospitality and people, the heritage, the new Civil Rights Trail and the Literary Lions. Sweet Home Alabama.