My trip to Mobile, Alabama back in February was one that I won’t ever forget. I checked off an item off my bucket list and that was to experience Mardi Gras. I was there for work, which happened to fall on the week of Mardi Gras festivities. Lucky me right? I found out that Mardi Gras originated in Mobile and they grant New Orleans permission to celebrate it. Thankfully, Mobile is more laid back and family friendly type of feel of Mardi Gras.
Downtown reminded me so much of New Orleans. I was walking down Dauphin St and right away took me back to Bourbon St, which is right when I snapped the picture above. See the balconies? It has that French Quarter feel.
Also, had no idea that moon pies are huge in Mobile, especially during Mardi Gras. I haven’t had a moon pie in forever so of course I put one in my mouth anytime I would see one, which was often as they had a big pile of mini moon pies in the breakroom. I also went to the grocery store and bought 2 big boxes of them, chocolate and vanilla, yum!
The Mardi Gras parades were so fun! They would throw all kinds of goodies including moon pies and of course these colorful beads. I still have them and used them to decorate the inside of my car. It was so cold outside too and I didn’t really bring proper cold weather clothes, so I was freezing.
I went to 4 restaurants/bars that I highly recommend. First one was for a quick bite to eat during lunch at this sandwich place that was featured on Food Network called Panini Pete’s. It was so delicious! Then at night I went to a “Caribbean” cafe but it was more American than anything. They didn’t have any plantains so that takes them off my Caribbean list. I even took a souvenir of their cup home and it was a fun restaurant. It’s called Montego’s on Dauphin St.
After that I went to Hayley’s Bar on Dauphin St because they supposedly had karaoke. Unfortunately for me, not until Thursday nights and I was there on a Tuesday night. The bartender was super nice and welcomed me by comping my beers. I only had 3 and since I haven’t been drinking that much anymore my tolerance was super low. Womp womp.
Last place I went to is the big burger you see there; LoDa BierGarten. “Lo” stands for Lower, “Da” is short for Dauphin – Lower Dauphin… and BierGarten, I think that’s German for beer. Google it, let me know if I was right. If not, no biggie. The burger was massive, yet very tasty. My only complaint was that they didn’t have a cutting knife so that I can cut my burger in half. You see how messy that sauce is, it was challenging eating it like a lady. I had enough beers the night before, so my last night in Mobile, I drank good ol’ H2O.
While I was at Hayley’s, I actually met a cool Puerto Rican girl and I feel like that alone made my trip because she was so easy to talk to, we could relate on a lot of things and she even gave me a ride back to my hotel. We got along so well she even picked me up at my hotel the last night I was there and hung out with me. We forgot to take a picture so my apologies. I do have this selfie of me though.
I had a super fab time and I loved Mobile. This city has so much character, so many people celebrating and having fun, it almost felt like I never left Austin. Boy they do go all out with the decorations for Mardi Gras. Everywhere you go, even inside grocery stores they had all kinds of Mardi Gras masks and decorations. It is no joke. The parade floats were amazingly decorated too and you can tell they put a lot of hard work into it.
One vast difference I noticed is that Mobile has NO homeless people. I don’t know if that’s good because maybe they have government housing for them or if Mobile is just not a happening spot for them to bum out at. Who knows. It was nice not running into homeless people, especially since I didn’t have a car and had to walk from the hotel to the office.
Even though I was only there for 4 days, I feel I made the best of it and would love to go back and visit more places. Until next time Alabama!!!
