Mobile

We started today with breakfast at Oliver's, the hotel's restaurant. Margherita was quite happy to have her grits and cheese. My wife changed from an Italian-American to a true Southern girl upon stepping off the plane. She loaded up with grits and other southern vittles for breakfast, and started speaking with a bit of a southern drawl.

After breakfast we went to grab a ride on LoDa Moda. LoDa Moda is not a new dance step they're doing down in Mobile, but it is a free trolley bus that goes around downtown. It stops at all the major downtown attractions, which makes it pretty convenient.

You pass the waterfront ( where would you believe, cruise ships are now stopping), the Museum of Mobile, the Exploreum, restaurants, parks, you get the idea. And with a price of free, you really can't beat it.

We did the loop and got the full overview of town, which I highly recommend upon entering any city. You have to know where you're going if you want to get there. Do the Loda Moda to get an overview of downtown.

After the tour we went to one of the area's biggest attractions, the USS Alabama Battleship Park. Why is it called a park, because the ship is only one of the few dozen things to see. They have the USS Alabama, a sub, another ship, a few dozen jets, jeeps, helicopters, etc... A military buff could spend a few days here and still not get bored. A non-military nut (Margherita) can run through the Battleship and wonder how sailors can fight in this southern heat. I did mention that my wife believes herself to be a southern girl, but only at night when it's cooler. During the day, or out of air conditioning, she reverts back to being a Yankee.

After visiting the hot battleship, the most logical thing to do was to visit a hot outdoor garden. Bellingrath Gardens was the biggest thing to see in the South around the time of the Great War. Mr. Bellingrath made his fortune bottling and distributing Coca-Cola. He was very proud of his Coca-Cola and was basically a workaholic. His doctor suggested that he spend more time in the country and therefore he built up his mansion there. I should mention that this is about forty-five minutes from downtown Mobile.

Well, as the battle of the sexes seems to have been around since the time of the apple in the Garden of Eden, Mr. Bellingrath wanted a simple fishing cottage. He could fish, he could talk with his friends, and he could sneak drinks away from his wife... who was a teetotaler (a.k.a hated drinking).

Bellengrath Gardens

What did his wife do? She decided to decorate- a lot. Mrs. Bellingrath loved her garden in Mobile but was running out of room, so she sent some of her plants there. Eventually the gardens filled acres and acres. By the way, so Mr. Bellingrath didn't get upset (against the doctor's orders), Mrs. Bellingrath made all her purchases with checks made out to "Cash" so the purchases wouldn't be traceable. It was after the gardens were completely laid out that they took down the fishing cottage and built a mansion.

Then, when the gardens were all filled up, she invited the town to visit her gardens for the day. The line of cars stretched for miles and was a ridiculously big success. Mr. Bellingrath tried once more to go fishing in peace with a million cars pulling up to the gardens.

Finally, they were getting so many people coming to the gardens, they started charging admission simply to reduce the traffic. They didn't want or need the money, they just figured it would reduce the car load.

Anyway, the gardens are beautiful and you can see why people would come from miles around to see where Mr. Bellingrath had his fishing cottage.

After visiting the Bellingrath Gardens and the mansion, we headed back to the hotel to change and went out for drinks with some friends at the Bayview Room of the Lafayette Plaza Hotel. I mention this because we've always had a theory that every city over a certain size seems to have a tall building with a restaurant that looks out on it. It doesn't really have to look out onto anything pretty, but it seems to be a requirement of some sort. If that building has a spinning floor, even better. If it has a spinning floor, a restaurant with a view, and a great name, everybody is happy.

In Mobile, they reached the appropriate city size and were required to build their official, "Tall Restaurant with a View". This made the city planners happy and it made the restaurant happy as it gave them a niche. The Bayview Room does what it claims to, and looks out on the bay. The bay isn't the prettiest thing in the world with all of the industry, however it's always fun to eat or drink at a rather high restaurant, and this was the highest one in town. Unfortunately, this restaurant didn't spin and constantly had you looking at the view. It lost one point for not spinning, but the Bayview room gained one point for it's accuracy in naming.

After drinks, we headed over to Roussos Seafood Restaurant for well... seafood. Roussos is a Greek/seafood restaurant to go along with the vast Greek population of Mobile. In this case, I am not kidding. I was a bit surprised to learn that there is a rather large Greek population in the Mobile vicinity. Mr. Roussos decided it was a great place to build a restaurant and has been there for years.

Regrettably Mr. Rousso was wrong about it being a great place to build a restaurant as this is their second location. The first location was destroyed in the big hurricane of 1979, but how were they to know that. They are working on moving to their third building in the restaurant's history.

At Roussos' we ordered the best seafood thing I've ever had before. That sentence would make more sense if you read it twice. Anyway, they take these tips of crab claws, bread them, and they're kind of like a cross between fried shrimp and chicken wings. The "handle" of the claw with the meat at the end, gives it that chicken wing impression. I've never tried it before hence the oddly written first sentence. Is it an entree? Is it an appetizer? It's a new thing, but a good thing.

Life was rather good eating these crab tips. I did feel rather guilty for the guy in the back who had to pop out all of these claws though. I mean, he must have spent a few days popping one after the other, just to make a dish.

We also had these desserts, which I'm told were to die for. We were in a group and they passed along the desserts for everybody to try. I'm a simple man, with simple needs but sharing my food does not go along with my basic culinary needs. I'm sure the rest of the group was lovely and clean, but I couldn't risk the imminent death and poisoning that would inevitably occur if my fork touched a part of the cake that somebody else touched. I even got the chills at my wedding, eating the wedding cake from the same fork that my wife used. We at least had a marriage license to do that, but this was just madness. I did manage to grab one piece of cake first before anybody else could infect it and yes, the desserts were great.

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Part 4