Take a Journey to the Deep South

 The Deep South of America is somewhere that most people have only seen on television, or in films like Gone with the Wind; they’ve also seen a good part of it washed away when the levies burst in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina a few years ago.

But it’s one of the most interesting, vibrant places to visit in America if you’re looking for something other than Disneyland, Washington DC or shopping in New York.

The Deep South has more of a cultural definition than a geographical one, though roughly speaking it spans across the country from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Mississippi River in the west down to the Gulf of Mexico in the south.

It’s the home of Graceland, of Country and Jazz music, enormous white clapper-board plantation houses, banjos, swamps and ‘gators.

The people of the Deep South are very much like they’re depicted in the films: mighty courteous, ma’am, and they will give you a very warm welcome and feed you plenty of enormous plates of food including the infamous ‘grits’.

 You could start your visit to the Deep South with a trip to Graceland, a 14-acre estate with more Elvis memorabilia than you could shake a stick at. Have a tour round Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis and New Orleans, famous for its funerals, strangely enough.

Or explore the forests that form the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (mid the bears). Or if you’re a film buff, visit pretty much anywhere in North Carolina to see sets from several famous films. The Aquarium in Georgia is well worth a visit too – the biggest one of its kind in the world.

 If you tell your friends that you’re going to America, they may be impressed – after all, it’s an expensive place to get to, and there’s loads of cool stuff to do. But tell them you’re going to the Deep South and you’ll dine off your stories for months.