A Weekend at Natchez

My wife and I celebrated our 6 year wedding anniversary by taking a weekend in Natchez. What a beautiful and sleepy town it is. We stayed at a bed and breakfast called Aunt Clara's Cottage, which is run by the same folks who run Deveraux Shields.

Here's the flickr photoset for our weekend in Natchez.

When we first arrived, we checked into our B&B then went to the tourist info site, which helped us get our bearings. We found that almost anything we needed would be in a 10 block radius around downtown.

We are vegetarians, so eating was a concern for us. The first night we ate at Thai Planet, which had a great vegetarian menu, but we found the noodle dishes one dimensional and plain, even though I got a spicy dish. And the spring rolls were greasy. Maybe the sushi was better. The atmoshpere was great, with a fountain and fake little birds on branches.

We went to Under the Hill Saloon which was a great hole in the wall kind of place. The building served as a whorehouse back in the day. The owner personally greeted us; "Mr. Miagi" kindly served us, and dark interior, the fans and cool river breeze kept us cool despite the lack of air conditioning. We never stayed after dark, but I imagine it gets pretty lively. They have bands on the weekends and there are rooms available upstairs for the adventurous bed and breakfast pioneer.

The Isle of Capri Casino took our $45 in short order, but it wasn't too crowded, even on the weekend. And frankly, it might be the only thing to do in town after 9pm. They roll up the carpets pretty early in Natchez.

Breakfast at the B&B was great. We talked to some fellow travellers and had some good eggs and french toast and yummy apple butter.

The next day we hit the antiques mall on Franklin Street downtown. Most of them were pretty upscale, but we found a great junk shop called Primitives Antiques. There was a lot of cool stuff. We walked out with two paintings. Another place called Darby's had fudge on sale which drew us in immediately, but it had cool stuff in it. We walked out with a birdhouse that looks like a mushroom, and a wooden carved goose.

We ate lunch at Biscuits and Blues, which originally didn't seem like a good place for vegetarians like us. But I had the Spinach Salad with Hot Mustard Dressing (with boiled eggs) while my wife had mozzerella sticks and the Veggie Poboy (fried eggplant meddallions on dressed poboy bread, which is kind of unusual). The biscuits and apricot butter are to die for.

We later hit Longwood, which is an octogonal house that was left unfinished, as it started construction in 1860. I think you can guess why it was left unfinished. The basement was nice, but it was left unfinished over the years so that we can see now how these things were built back then.

The next day we saw Rosalie. Our tour guide was among the best I've ever had. She was witty, knowledgable, old, and very southern. Rosalie has much original furniture and art, and a prominent place on the bluffs at Natchez. If you have to see only two places in Natchez, I'd recommend Longwood and Rosalie.