We’re Mobile

Years ago, someone we met in passing hyped up Mobile. I don’t even remember who it was, let alone if they were a reliable source of information. But since then we’ve had a strange compulsion to visit Alabama’s third largest city. This is how we do things: eyes closed, a faint hunch, and absolutely no planning.

As a result, we rolled into Mobile looking for a place to stay and stumbled upon the Budget Inn.
What a great place right? Quaint, historic looking, within spitting distance of downtown. No. Not right. We’ve stayed in some pretty questionable places in the past (a brothel on the Thai-Cambodia border comes to mind – yes, that is a used condom in the soap dish) but the Budget Inn proudly takes a place in our pantheon of sketchiest all time lodgings. Read this great review, it pretty much says it all. I don’t want to be unfair, if you like dirt-cheap rates, mold spores, mothballs, and deadbolts that have clearly been tore apart and reassembled with paperclips, then this is the place for you. Just make sure you don’t walk barefoot on the carpet. But to be honest, I slept quite soundly.

Sorry Mobile, I’m judging you too quickly. You are more than the Budget Inn. For instance, it happened to be gay pride the weekend we were there. Normally this would not have warranted comment – Mobile’s gay pride is the East Village on any given Tuesday. But Mobile streets tend to be pretty vacant. Now imagine a large crowd of lost-looking lesbians wandering down an otherwise deserted Cotton City street, abandoned antebellum townhouses on one side, confederate flags on the other. Weird.

So went 24 hours in Mobile. We rode safely out of town, satisfied that our itch had been scratched. To be fair, we caught some pretty good music at a bar called The Bike Shop, ogled some old mansions, and checked out a formal garden.

Aren’t we fancy?