Google Maps did say “Or you could just fucking fly, you tool”
I ‘d best get this all written down, as we’re flying to Brazil tomorrow night and the chances of me recalling the past week with any kind of accuracy after several days of flailing around Sao Paulo are dubious.
We picked up another car in Ft Lauderdale after disembarking the big boat. It appears that Budget have fallen for the sultry siren song of favourable warrantees and generous service plans like much of the US, as we were given a Kia Sorrento, the first car to comfortably hold our luggage this trip. Serial killers take note. It’s the V6 version and so merrily pissed away fuel with abandon. Fortunately every state from here on in had gas prices in and around $2 per gallon. That’s 34p per litre. Fucksake. (For interested American readers, UK gasoline is presently at a low of $6.41 a gallon)
It was already parked like that
We drove across the state to the Panhandle, trying to not look too hard at Disneyworld on the way through Orlando, to Monticello where we stayed at a B&B in one of the town’s historic Antebellum-type houses. We spoke over breakfast to a very nice couple who live on the gulf coast near New Orleans, who gave us some great tips for things to see and do when when we got to the Big Easy. We ate in a Mexican restaurant, where the proprietor was convinced Chan was some variety of Latina and kept trying to speak Spanish to her, deaf to her protests that she was in fact English. She’s going to have so much fun in South America.
I have not bothered to look up what ‘Antebellum’ means
We spent a night there and then drove across to Mobile, Alabama, chiefly because I wanted to. We stopped briefly in Destin, where we found a Big Fat Head in the wild:
Mobile was a lot more pleasant than I expected, but I was expecting moonshine, baseball caps and domestic violence. Blame your exported cultural stereotypes, not me. Anyway, it’s a nice town. We stayed in another historic building B&B, which again was very nice.
Antebellum, probably. Still no idea.
I made sure to have the local shrimp and grits (grits are old news for me, much like fried green tomatoes and eggs cooked more than two ways. You have no secrets from me now, America). We were only there for a night, so the following morning we made time to visit the one-third scale version of the fort, which they demolished at some point. It has a quaint museum of the local colonial history from which I learned of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. This chap was one of the French co-founders of Mobile who was a skilled linguist who conversed fluently with the local Indians as well as adopting all of their tattoos and joined them hunting and on war parties in the nude. When in Rome, I guess.
Hardcore
We also popped into the nearby just-as-historic Condé-Charlotte house museum, run by two delightful ladies from -and I’ll make sure to get this right- The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in The State of Alabama.
They’ve set up the various rooms to be themed in the style of the various powers that’ve owned and run the area over the years, hence the flags outside. They have a very tactile approach to the explanation and demonstration of the priceless period artefacts in their collection (one quote: “Huh, someone’s torn the leather (in a 200 year old writing box). It wasn’t like that on Monday”), but each to their own.
Which reminds me to link to this video about the Confederate flag, the legitimate version of which is shown on that shield above:
Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Ich muss mich beeilen. Ich habe zwei Wochen nach den USA zu diskutieren und nur einen Tag es zu tun. Wir sind von Florida nach Mobile, Alabama gereist. Wir haben jetzt eine koreanische Auto.
