South Alabama -- Bellingrath Garden and Home and Gulf Shores

My cousins, Sarah and Gene, visited me last weekend. Sarah is a college student (Wellsley) and Gene came from New York.

We kicked off the visit with a bbq dinner at Dreamland. Supposedly, the original Dreamland in Tuscaloosa is the best; but we were quite impressed with what we got at the Montgomery site.

On Saturday, we headed down to Bellingrath Garden and Home, about 20 miles south of Mobile, to see the azaleas. Walter Duncan Bellgrath was a Coca Cola executive. He and his wife bought 900 acres of land and built a home. The garden and home were donated to a nonprofit organization after he died. The 65 acre garden is beautifully landscaped and apparently blooms year round. The azaleas were in full bloom when we went. But none of us knew what they looked like so we ended up asking somebody to make sure we actually did take pictures of them. =P

We only took the tour of the gardens, which took a while because they were quite pretty and because we were taking pictures non-stop. It also turns out that Azalea Trail Maiden reunion was going on, so we got to see pretty ladies all dressed up.

Afterwards, we went to Mobile for lunch. My little book told me to go to Rousso's, which unfortunately had relocated. So we popped into the visitor center, and the nice old lady recommended that we have our lunch at Spot of Tea. The food was amazing; I normally don't like sandwiches but my blackened chicken sandwich was quite delicious. The hash browns were to die for, with a little bit of a kick from the peppers. Unfortunately, the service was somewhat lackluster because they had more customers than usual. But I would visit there again, and probably get the exact same thing!

After lunch, we stopped by A&M Peanut shop, where they roasted peanuts and other nuts themselves. It was quite a quaint little shop, and we came away with pecan pralines, creole peanuts (salty, spicy & highly addicting!), and chocolate covered pretzels.

Both the lunch place and the peanut shop was located on Dauphin Street. It was rather sad walking down the street because every other shop was boarded up. We saw all these architecturally interesting but dilapidated buildings, sandwiched in between few shops that were open.

Then we jumped into my car to check out the beaches by the Gulf Shores. By the time we got there, it was late afternoon, but we still had a lot of fun. We wrote out "Happy Birthday Diane" with seashells and took pictures so Sarah could send it to her friend. But the drive there and back, we saw the destruction of Hurricane Ivan and noticed that buildings still needed repairs here and there.

It was a lot of fun. This coming weekend, I plan to take Talladega scenic drive and go climb the Cheaha Mountain -- the highest point in Alabama!