Birmingham, Alabama

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Birmingham
Mick and I walked a couple of blocks to the greyhound station and boarded a bus destined for Birmingham, Alabama. It was a surprisingly good trip. Quiet busload of people, relatively quick and it was squeaky clean. We were staying with Kisani & Kevin from couchsurfing and after Kevin picked us up from the bus station he took us on a mini tour around the downtown area and a cup of coffee to recharge. We stowed our stuff at their place, freshened up and then spent the afternoon at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute where we learnt a little more about that period of time. This place charged $10 to enter (whereas Atlanta’s attraction was cost free) but it was an incredible exhibition and in our opinion, well worth the dollars. Across the road was the Kelly Ingram Park with sculptures depicting scenes from the 1960’s civil rights marches which was nice to walk around. That evening we went out for dinner with our hosts to a great local restaurant(Ro Jo’s maybe) with good food and healthy serving sizes.

In the morning Kevin escorted us through a lightning fast tour of Sloss Furnaces, which is a now decommissioned steel refinery. It was really interesting and we could see how it could be a little spooky at night as it is rumoured to be haunted. They have made use of one portion of the property as a location for concerts that would be a very unique venue but the rest is simply a museum. Kevin then dropped us off at the Amtrak station to await the train headed towards New Orleans. The train conductor told us of a cozy garden just down the street we could laze in while we waited for the train, it was private but the gates were never locked so we enjoyed a picnic lunch in the sun.

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