Bittersweet Home Alabama by Anthea Gerrie

It was always beautiful, even when it was a little bit ugly too.

I remember marvelling on my first drive through Alabama in the 1960s at the green, green lawns, a perfect foil to the red brick, white-trimmed antebellum mansions, a sense of highly-manicured, old-time graciousness.

But there was nothing gracious about the Greyhound bus station in Birmingham, the state’s largest town, where I waited in vain to get coffee during a 20-minute rest stop. Too late - at the call to re-board the bus - I realised I had been sitting at the opposite counter to the majority of my fellow travellers. No-one felt able to tell me - perhaps because the legalities of such segregation were already being challenged - that as the only white at the black counter, I was in the “wrong” place to get served.

Now Alabama is a happier, more equal place, as I discovered when an American friend persuaded me to check out the state’s coast, which has become a real holiday playground, giving neighbours New Orleans and Florida a run for their money. Black and white work, if not always play, side by side, and with just a touch of chutzpah, the state’s bitter civil rights struggles have been turned into a proud history which has spawned a slew of commemorative attractions.

All told, Sweet Home Alabama, as the state now calls itself, offers an intriguing mix of history and hedonism, and nowhere more so than Mobile, a laid-back yet vibrant city on the Gulf coast which lays claim to a host of landmark events. Here, the last slave ship to dock in a US port is said to have landed, mardi gras was first celebrated a century before it reached New Orleans, and debutantes in pink dresses continue to be a major fixture of the social scene.

Mardi gras season, which falls in the two-week run-up to February 24 in 2009, would be a fine time to discover Mobile. As with the more high-profile festival in New Orleans, it features nightly parades with elaborate floats, brass marching bands, and oodles of purple, green and gold beads to be caught from the float-riders by the lucky. But what’s really special about mardi gras in Mobile - apart from the Moon Pie marshmallow cookies - is the astonishing costumes of the festival kings and queens, with huge, elaborate trains which cost tens of thousands to embroider and personalise.

“Then they usually discard them and start all over the following year, luckily for us!” grins Edward Ladd, curator of Mobile’s fabulous Carnival Museum, which shows and tells with great flair how mardi gras has developed in the city over three centuries. Walking me through room after room of the trains, crowns, costumes and debutante ephemera which fill a lovely old merchant’s mansion, he explains how a black king called Alexis suddenly turned up in town in 1939, where hitherto there had only been a white king, Felix III. Now the “coronation” by each year’s Alexis and Felix of his queen is the highlight of the festival, and in recent years black and white mardi gras “royalty” have started to attend each other’s balls.

More sober is the story told over at the civic museum about the last slave ship to arrive in the US, half a century after the practice of transporting Africans to America was banned. “Mobile had less slaves than elsewhere, and was less hard on them than the plantation owners - but it was still no picnic,” says Sheila Flannagan, the black assistant director of the museum.

Elsewhere in town, husbands and sons will enjoy touring the battleship and World War II submarine of the USS Alabama, set in its own memorial park, along with 20 rare aircraft and a flight simulator.

But there’s much more to Mobile than museums; this compact town is awash with eclectic shops and restaurants, including the seafood dive Wintzell’s, for which the phrase “finger-licking-good” could have been invented.

“You’ve never tasted a fried dill pickle?” Sam, our server, asked with genuine astonishment.

“Down here, there ain’t a thing we don’t dip in cornmeal, fry and serve with ranch dressing!” Done just like that and piping hot, the pickle slices made as fabulous an appetiser as the state favourite, fried green tomatoes. Even better were the wood-fired oysters, the best way to enjoy the Gulf mollusc: stuffed in the shell with lemon butter, lightly topped with parmesan and run into a wood-fired oven for a couple of minutes - yum! We walked off the seafood and cornmeal feast with a tour of “LoDa”, as Lower Dauphin Street is dubbed, enjoying the colonnaded buildings with curly wrought iron balconies, punctuated with gracious squares.

From Mobile it was off to Fairhope, an elegant little shopping town beloved of fashionistas with a penchant for the eclectic. Utopia,which had the looks of a fine vintage clothes shop and prices to match, turned out to be an emporium for affordable all-new clothes; a retro faux-Persian lamb jacket set me back all of £30, even though the pound had already plunged against the dollar.

After a cup of delicious seafood gumbo made to an old family recipe at the Old Bay Steamer, it was time to hunt out more bargains at the outlet mall in nearby Foley, anchored by Ralph Lauren and Banana Republic.

The well-heeled are drawn to this eastern shore of Mobile Bay by the presence of one of America’s great 19th-century wooden hotels, the Grand, at nearby Point Clear, which has been renovated to the tune of $100m over the past five years. It sits on 550 waterside acres incorporating tennis courts, golf courses and a huge pool. Previous guests include Lady Thatcher, Barbara Bush and the queen of country music, Dolly Parton, and there is a historic cemetery for 300 unknown Confederate soldiers on the site (the hotel was converted into a hospital during the American Civil War).

It’s vital to arrive before 4pm not to miss the new tradition of firing a cannon out to sea at four in memory of servicemen past and present. After that people gather round the cosy, many-sided fireplace for tea - though appetite should be conserved for dinner in the grand dining-room. Here, a silver cocktail trolley dispensing tableside drinks is the star of the show, along with resident pianist Jeannie Perkins, a pukka jazz-club singer who could not play enough requests for us - and we couldn’t come up with a song she didn’t know the words for. Breakfast, served from a dozen silver chafing-dishes, was a gourmet delight, awash with southern delicacies including grits, scone-like biscuits and red-eye gravy.

However, Alabama’s best hotel must surely be the Grand’s sister, the 150-year-old Battle House, known as “Mobile’s living room” for its importance to the city’s upper crust social life. Here, an unexpected treat for such a historic establishment is the brand-new spa, where Jason, harnessing best practice from east and west, delivered simply the best massage I have ever experienced. A huge hot tub with massage jets and a central fireplace made the relaxing room a treat in its own right.

Another very different kind of treat was the two quintessential beach bars as different as chalk and cheese which serve bathers enjoying Alabama’s 32 miles of fine white sands. Lulu’s, a vast barn of a restaurant with tables beside the water, is a hopping family-friendly place with tasty salads and sandwiches to accompany the tropical drinks (owner Lucy is the sister of singer Jimmy Buffett of “Margaritaville” fame). Florabama, on the other hand, is a real dive on the Florida state line, with customers’ bras proudly displayed on a washing line and a raucous atmosphere - though the live music, a mix of rock and country, was great. I longed to be brave enough to be the woman in the refrain from the favourite house song: “Last night I saw your bra hanging in the Florabama”!

“Hanging” is what locals largely seem to do in Alabama - few stray more than 50 miles from home in their lifetime, I was told. But the traveller doesn’t have to follow suit; given that a car is a must to get around Mobile Bay, it could also be used to visit the state capital, Montgomery, which has a fine civil rights centre, and the historic trail from there to Selma once trodden by activitists marching past sweeping plantation homes. But I preferred not to remind myself second time round of that bitter juxtaposition; Mobile, where there were free blacks who held high office even 200 years ago, was always a more equal place than the plantation trail, and as the Deep South goes, it is a lot less “redneck”.