Last year around this time, Amina and I were househunting in Nashville. Things looked promising on the job front (and oh what an illusion that turned out to be) and the weather was nothing short of outstanding, especially considering that our front yard in Chanhassen was still frozen that week. We liked Nashville quite a lot, and were ready to take the plunge.
If you could get into your time machine and grab us – say, at the airport on our flight back to Minneapolis – and tell us that, just one year later, we'd (1) be vacationing in Alabama, of all places, and (2) consider it to be the best vacation we've had in four years ... well, you can see where this paragraph is headed.
What a great stay we've had at The Grand Hotel. The grounds are impeccable, the resort has a sense of history and grandeur, and our room was nothing short of perfect. We did the Easter brunch today and I was ever so impressed – amazing appetizers, every kind of dessert imaginable and service that knocked our socks off.
This part of Alabama is very quaint; it's almost like a little slice of New England, with accents that are just as hard to understand. The town of Fairhope is something out of a movie set, with tree-lined boulevards filled with quaint knick-knack, antique and book stores. The city fathers have done an admirable job of hiding the urban sprawl and chain restaurants far from the main streets ... we found a great little wine and cheese shop and bought provisions for a great in-room picnic dinner one evening, and Amina found an interesting hinged produce box from 1933 or 1934 ... it's not dated, but there's a huge NRA logo burned into one side.
The Grand is less than an hour from Orange Beach, which has gorgeous, white sand beaches and water about as blue as we saw in Cancun last year. We settled in for a long day yesterday; it was in the mid-70s with mild wind and mostly sunny skies. I wasted quite a few pixels on the beach, still chasing those elusive beach girls photos that I've been seeking for a few years now ...
I was dedicated to the cause, let me tell you ...
This trip certainly changed my attitude about the Deep South, though I'm sure I'm seeing just a slice of it here in southern Alabama. I held a pretty biased view of what ... well, of what everything south of where I lived happened to be like. This trip has changed a bit of that, and I look forward to opening my mind down the road. It's not quite "Sweet Home Alabama" but who knows? Maybe this governor's true.
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