Photo by Glenda Booth
At Bellingrath Gardens and Home, a garden behind the home.
At Bellingrath Gardens and Home, a garden behind the home.
At Mobile, Alabama’s Bellingrath Gardens, something blooms all year, touted Director Tom McGehee. The same can be said of the city. With its temperate climate, Gulf breezes, eclectic cuisine and vibrant spirit, Mobile blooms all year too.
Other claims to fame: Mobile was the last city that Union troops captured, an occupation “supposed to be brief hostilities,” quipped Blackwell; the first capital of the Louisiana territory; hometown of musician Jimmy Buffet and baseball great Hank Aaron; the birthplace of container shipping; the Azalea City and once the tenth wealthiest city in the U.S., thanks to King Cotton. It’s a town where celebrants lower a 40-foot moonpie on New Year’s Eve.
As a port, Mobile is more diverse than many southern cities, a draw for Jewish, Irish, German, Greek and Lebanese immigrants over the years. Mobile’s sister city is Havana and tourism officials boast of the town’s longstanding ties to Cuba. Promoters say that in Mobile, people get along. “In the ‘60s, Mobile was never on the news like Birmingham and Montgomery,” bragged McGehee, referring to some explosive Civil Rights era events. Mix up some seafood, Delta blues, salt marshes, azaleas, alligators and a little southern hospitality, you’ve got Mobile.
A walking tour through the one-mile historic district is a fitting introduction to the city. The restaurant scene is on Dauphin Street, “a tame Bourbon Street,” says David Clark, head of Visit Mobile. Four breweries and several galleries welcome walk-ins. The Mobile Arts Council has three galleries for local artists and public art, like the Candy Lady at Franklin and Dauphin Streets created by teens in detention. The innovative Alabama Contemporary Art Center explores social and cultural issues through art, subtle messages to provoke conversation on topics like climate change and food deserts. “We’re not in your face,” commented Amanda Solley, Executive Director.
The Carnival Museum is the heart and soul of this town. Visitors quickly learn that Carnival is a season lasting three to four months; Mardi Gras, one day. Other tidbits: unlike New Orleanians who use the same floats year after year, Mobilians make original paper mâché floats by hand every year. The museum is packed full of Carnival history and personalities like the locals who were crowned king and queen in tradition-bound public coronations over the years. Multiple rooms display ornate, glittery gowns and suits worn by Mardi Gras bigwigs. Patricia Haisell-Richardson is the local, expert artist-seamstress who makes lavish, 18- to 25-foot trains for the queens and kings, some so heavy they need ball bearings. “We put the regal in your regalia,” she claims. One room is devoted to the Cowboy Comics, a rowdy, all-male troupe who eschew a float and parade on a flatbed truck with the fattest guy riding as the “queen” on a toilet seat, a tradition dating to 1884.
Docents at the History Museum of Mobile visitors eagerly discuss another bragging point: the Civil War submarine, the Huntley, was built in Mobile, the first sub to sink a vessel. It required eight men to turn the spindle that powered it. And by the way, the Battle of Mobile Bay “turned the Navy toward the Union’s favor,” visitors learn. Other exhibits explore native American life and recount Mobile’s founding. Another on the Middle Passage poignantly addresses the local, 19th century slave trade.
Outdoor enthusiasts call the Mobile River Basin complex “America’s Amazon,” so getting to know Mobile means getting outside. The basin and its wetlands, forests, creeks, rivers and estuary are a diverse, biological community. Famous biologist and native Alabamian E. O. Wilson once said, “I’ve been all over the world and the most wondrous place was right here in Alabama all along.”
Dauphin Island, 38 miles out of town, has an Audubon sanctuary, estuarium and Civil War fort, Fort Gaines, with a working blacksmith. The British in 1815 were underwhelmed with the island, with one officer commenting that it was “very barren . . . and produced nothing at all” but snakes, alligators, mosquitoes and biting flies.” They resorted to eating alligators, with a “flavor like coarsely-fed pork.” The uneaten ones can grow to 19 feet and are easy to see in the island’s swampy areas, seemingly expecting handouts from visitors.
The Audubon Sanctuary is 137 acres of free public beach, saw palmettos, slash and long leaf pine, magnolias and bald cypress trees. Guides explain that wax myrtle is the “miracle bush” because it repels fleas. In and around the pond lurk alligators, softshell and pond turtles, osprey, bald eagles, great horned owls, kestrels, wood ducks and moorhens. The dunes are home to beach heather, sandhill rosemary, sea oats, live oaks, magnolias, wind and salty air, with hundreds of brown pelicans constantly flapping by.
The Sea Lab’s Estuarium gives the big perspective on Mobile Bay, the barrier islands and the Gulf of Mexico. Exhibits explore topics like coastal eocsystems, marine sediments, sharks and the lives of sea animals. Visitors can feel cownose rays in the touch tank.
DINING
Mobile’s cuisine is a true eating adventure, like shrimp over fried green tomatoes, spicy chicken and grits, black-eyed pea skillet dinner and banana pudding. Mobile Bay stew is a hearty, aromatic mélange of bacon, sausage, onions, celery, bell peppers, potatoes, garlic, shrimp, flounder, crabmeat, oysters, poached eggs and various pungent additions like Tony Chachere’s seasoning.
Then there are pickle pops, dill pickles on a stick. About pickles, Shellie Teague with the Mobile Arts Council explained, “Southerners fry ‘em and freeze ‘em. We pickle everything, even eggs.”
Dauphin Restaurant -- Owned by on-the-scene, six-foot-six Bob Baumhower, a former Dolphins’ lineman, chefs cook on a black walnut table. The restaurant has a 360-degree view of the city, port and bay. The menu features Gulf Coast classics like sheepshead, a flaky fish caught only in Mobile Bay, poke, fried alligator and Gumbo Z’herb
Ruby Slipper – This is the place to pig out for breakfast or brunch on catfish and grits; eggs cochon; shrimp boogaloo; shrimp Benedict; bacon praline French toast; pancakes dripping with toppings like raspberry and white chocolate chip sauce, all washed down with a bacon-infused Bloody Mary. Their motto: “You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.” They sell take-home, pickled green beans.
Wintzells Oyster House – This oyster bar founded with six stools in 1938 is a not-to-be-missed, all-sensory, seafood extravanza. Wintzells specializes in sea-to-table oysters galore: fried, stewed, nude, chargrilled, Rockefellered, Bioenvilled, Montereyed, Carnivaled, accompanied by fried dill pickles, collard greens and okra.
OTHER THINGS TO DO
A true highlight of the Mobile Azalea Trail, Bellingrath Gardens in nearby Theodore was the 1,000-acre estate of Walter Bellingrath, an early 20th century, super-successful Coca Cola bottler, and wife Bessie Mae, an antique collector who apparently had few fiscal restraints. The 1,500-square-foot, 15-room house built in 1935 houses is crammed with their original furniture and the antiques she bought in New Orleans and beyond, gems like nine sets of Chinese porcelain and European doll heads in which owners hid jewelry in the Civil War. A 50-person staff maintains 65 acres of gardens, where more than 250,000 azaleas explode in March. A boardwalk through a brackish wetland of the Fowl River offers a slice of southern Alabama’s watery habitats.
Mobile has an African-American Heritage driving tour, Segway tours, a Civil War Trail, Gulf Coast Ducks for amphibious exploration, year-round fishing and a birding trail.
LODGING
The elegant, downtown Battle House Renaissance Hotel, which opened in 1702, hosted notables, like Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt and the King, Elvis Presley. Hoteliers like to show off the Beaux Arts lobby, the Crystal Ballroom, the whispering arch and Tiffany glass. It has survived three major hurricanes and Katrina’s flooding in 2005.
The downtown Renaissance Mobile Riverview Plaza Hotel has 373 nautically-inspired rooms, marble bathrooms and views of Mobile’s waterfront.
For other lodging options, visit https://www.mobile.org/places-to-stay/.
GETTING THERE
American, United and Delta Airlines fly from the Washington, D. C., area to Mobile.
INFORMATION AND 2019 EVENTS
- Azalea Bloom Out, Bellingrath Gardens and Home, March 3 to 31
- Carnival and Mardi Gras, February 15 to March 5
- St. Patrick’s Day Parade, March 17
- Festival of Flowers, March 22-24
- Downtown Cajun Cookoff, March 23
- Thunder on the Bay, April 27 and 28, celebrating the Battle of Mobile Bay
- SouthSounds Music and Arts Festival, April 13-15
