Travel South: from Nashville to New Orleans via Alabama

Nashville – aka Music City, USA, draws millions of music enthusiasts every year to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium and the Johnny Cash Museum – the shrines of country and pop music. Nashville and its surroundings are also brimming with typical honky-tonks. The city overlooks the Cumberland river, making for very pleasant riverbank walks.

In Huntsville, the largest city in Alabama, you can find the US Space and Rocket Center, second in importance only to Cape Canaveral. It is here that in the 1960s, the first American satellite to be launched into orbit and the spacecraft that carried humans to the moon for the first time were assembled.

Birmingham, in Alabama, is the city where music and the fight for civil rights come together. In the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, you can find the Carver Theatre where some great performers of the genre have performed; it is recommended to spend an evening in one of the city's juke joints. A visit to the Civil Rights District is a must, where you can find the 16th Street Baptist Church, bombed by the KKK in 1963, Kelly Ingram Park, where demonstrations were held in the 1960s, and the moving Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which illustrates the history of the struggle for civil and human rights.

Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, is the city where the famous bus boycott by Rosa Parks took place. The Rosa Parks Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice are must-see attractions. In 1965, the historic civil rights march led by Martin Luther King started from here, heading towards Selma, 80 km away. Among the other iconic places in the town, it is worth visiting the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge and the numerous art installations along the route to Montgomery.

The town of Mobile is famous for the USS Alabama museum, which is located inside a historic World War II ship, and for its carnival, very colorful and second in importance only to that of New Orleans, which can be experienced not only in the month of February but throughout the year by visiting the dedicated museum. A short distance away are the Bellingrath Gardens, owned by the founder of Coca Cola, magnificent gardens with a profusion of flowers and variety of plants.

Inhabited by the creole aristocracy descended from Spanish and French settlers, New Orleans embraces a bend in the Mississippi River. At the center of it all is the French Quarter, decadent but still alive, with narrow bustling streets and hidden courtyards. Stop for a few days to soak up the atmosphere, taste the beignets & café au lait at Café du Monde, discover Bourbon Street at night, excessive, raucous, infamous, with music pouring out of every window; board the St Charles streetcar to reach the seductive Garden District and stroll among elegant homes and majestic trees. Exploring the surrounding area, with an airboat tour in a nearby swamp or a visit to a historic plantation, completes the vision of a nostalgic and fascinating South.