Alabama has the friendliest people we have come across yet. Every staff member we came saw in the hotel greeted us with a warm 'how y'all doing today?' and wished us a great day.
It was a warm day, not as humid as Miami or Orlando but hot when the sun was out.
We drove down to the Visitors Centre to go on a trolley tour of the local attractions. It was a hop on hop off and only cost $3 each for the day.The trolley leaves on the hour every hour and we were lucky it came within a few minutes. The lady in the Centre had told us what we could see at each stop so we decided to get out at the State Capitol which gave us 3 or 4 other buildings/museums to visit within a few blocks.
Montgomery became the capital of Alabama in 1846. The building we toured was built in 1850-51 after an earlier building on the site burned down in 1849.
This building is significant in Alabama's history as it was the place the Confederate States of America was 'born', where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the first President in 1861 and where the 1965 Voting Rights March led by Martin Luther King Jr ended.
We did a self tour - there were plenty of rooms we could look at, including the Senate Chamber which has been restored to look as close as possible as it had in 1861 when the Confederate States was organised.
It is a working building & we walked past rooms where people were in their offices.
Next we walked over to the First White House of the Confederacy. This house was built in 1835 & was the residence of President Davis & his family during the first few months of the Civil War. We were given a folder when we went in that described each room & the artifacts in it. There were old letters, clothing, shoes and household items. It was really interesting.
Our next stop was the Civil Rights Memorial & Centre. Civil rights are still a struggle for many people, especially blacks. We had to go through security and have bags checked because the building & it's workers were the target of a bomb in the 1990s. We were able to join a tour group inside which gave us more information & we watched a movie about the fight for civil rights & some of the horrific things African Americans have had to endure. These atrocities continue today. Recent cases include a member of a skinhead group having to kill a black man as his initiation to the group. Another is 2 white men competing with each other to see who can kill the most blacks.
Montgomery is considered to be where the Civil Rights Movement began. Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white man. She was arrested for that. Her arrest led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in which blacks refused to catch public transport until the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public transport was unconstitutional. This offered inspiration for the Civil Rights Movement.
In the museum is the Wall of Tolerance. It has people's names moving up & down it all the time. You can add your name to it and pledge to look after the rights of others so we did that.
Down on the next corner was the church where Martin Luther King Jr was minister for 6yrs. You can do a tour of the church but we didn't have time.
We got back on the trolley and got off at Old Alabama Town. This is a collection of about 40 buildings that have been restored to look as they would have in the 1800s. We thought we could walk through ourselves but we had to buy a ticket. As we were short on time we opted for the one block tour which would take in about 5 buildings. We had to start at Lucas Tavern where there was a guide, then we would self tour. The man we came across in here was incredibly annoying and kept talking about all sorts of things that were irrelevant to Old Alabama Town. As we were finally finishing this building, a woman came to take us through a residence on the next block. We didn't know we would be doing this. It was interesting to see the house though. It was also full of artifacts from the period. I was surprised by the amount of old books that weren't behind glass. The house had a staircase with quite a wide turn in it. This is called a coffin corner and allowed coffins to be carried down without hitting the walls.
We were able to look in all the rooms, including the kitchen, laundry & servants quarters which were all located away from the main house.
Once we finished this tour, we went back to wait for Ray, the trolley driver to pick us up. We missed out on sering the other buildings but we would have had to encounter that man again & we couldn't handle it.
We spent far longer exploring Montgomery than we though we would so we missed our southern style lunch. It was about 3.30pm by the time we got back to the visitors centre. We were on our way to Atlanta by about 4pm.
We arrived just before 7pm & once settled headed out for an Italian dinner across the road. It was delicious!
My package should be here tomorrow. The man in Miami was going to UPS it for me so it would be here overnight. Fingers crossed it arrives!
Tomorrow we have a few places we want to visit before heading to the baseball tomorrow night.