That area, along with Selma and Montgomery, was the heart of the American Civil Rights movement. Lots of places to visit related to that.

Other than that it’s not that exciting an area. The University of Alabama is nearby in Tuscaloosa. Nice campus.

I do like the beaches on the Gulf. Fort Morgan/Gulf Shores/Orange/Perdido. That’s going to be a five hour drive from Birmingham though.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

If you are willing to drive 4-5 hours to the coast, you are also only 5 hours from New Orleans, which is unique and has plenty of beautiful sites outside of Bourbon Street tourist trap.

Go to Atlanta and visit the Coca Cola museum and have a day at Six Flags - you MUSt have a funnel cake. You can go see Stone Mountain too.

Oak Mountain State Park-Mtb biking, hiking, running
https://www.alapark.com/...-mountain-state-park


Local bike store-I don’t know about rentals though
https://www.cahabacycles.com/

Beaches are worth checking out.

If you enjoy (or would like to try) Cuban food, I highly recommend you go here to see Mr. Ramirez:

http://www.koolkornersandwiches.com/

If you are into motorcycles at all, the vintage motorcycle museum at Barber Motorsports Park is a cannot miss. About 20 minutes east of downtown. Check Facebook for Vulcan Triathletes. Active group.

Until your post, I had never heard of the World Games. Apparently this event hosts sports not in the Olympics and is held the summer after the Olympics. For the multisport fans here at ST, there is not much to pick from except duathlon - men's, women's and mixed. There are other, potentially interesting events (life saving!) and the event is in Birmingham, AL rather than some international destination (Chengdu, China, next time, according to Wikipedia). I have travel plans for next week and will be OOT for the duathlon event, but if I were home, I'd probably drive down for the weekend (about 3h by car from my location).

Go eat.
I have an Aunt that was an editor at Cooking Light Mag & Food & Wine mag that sent me the following list when I was there for a few days:
1. Highlands Bar & Grill & 2. Chez Fonton 3. Bottega.

Thank you for your suggestions!

Is that near Birmingham? ;-)

Those are great places but Highlands hasn't reopened since COVID, unfortunately. I'll add Automatic Seafood to the list (the chef just won the James Beard Award for best chef in the South), and Gianmarco's (try the wine bar in the back). For updated "Southern Food" I recommend Johnny's in Homewood.

As for activities around Birmingham, the difficulty is that July isn't the best time of year to be outside unless you're by the water. We were at the World Games on Sunday and the heat and humidity was awful. But I second Oak Mountain (you can rent mountain bikes at Cahaba Cycles linked above or do swimming/paddleboarding at the lake) or for a cool road ride you can do the Chief Ladiga/Silver Comet trail that starts an hour's drive east of town. It's a rails trail (no cars) that goes from Anniston, AL to Atlanta through countryside and small towns. But take a lot of water.

For day trips: the Peace and Justice Museum in Montgomery, hiking at DeSoto State Park or hiking/swimming at Little River Canyon, visit Chattanooga, or visit the Gulf Coast beaches already mentioned.

Edited to also second Barber Motorsports Museum. If you're a fan of cars, motorcycles or motorsports in general, this is an amazing place.

bentus - are you originally from the U.S. and have you been to the U.S. before? The reason I am asking is that whenever I travel to foreign countries some of the things that I find the most captivating are things that are unique to that area, but have become daily features to the folks who live there.

If you are into experiencing some Americana atmosphere, you might consider going to a Birmingham Barons minor league baseball game. I visited the stadium a few years ago when driving through. It is a pretty nice ballpark. They are playing the Montgomery Biscuits this week (a team who's mascot is an anthropomorphized biscuit).
If you do end up heading to the coast, you will probably see cotton fields beginning to bloom in fields next to the road, which I find incredibly beautiful. You can take the big roads south of course, but that is pretty impersonal. It adds maybe 20% of trip time or less to take smaller roads, but I gladly trade the time for that experience when I am driving through. Passing through little towns like Elba Alabama on my way to the beach is often a highlight of vacation for the family. We will stop and walk around whenever we see something interesting. I will confess that I am a bit of a nerd, and I literally have stopped the car just to check out the soil because it is so different from what we have up here in the Midwest. So depending on how many times you stop, it could add more than 20%. :)

Have fun and good luck!

Well it's cooled off a few degrees since Sunday. Much more tolerable than heat of few previous weeks.

I'm very excited about duathlon Saturday and Sunday. Course is urban, very technical, lots of turns, and all within ten blocks of start and finish at Railroad Park. Great for spectators as there will be multiple places to view riders and runners pass, and maybe even possible see up to three passes per lap (with a bit of running).

Women: Saturday 8:00 am
Men: Saturday 5:00 pm
Mixed Relay: Sunday 1:00

I'm hearing good things about the Games, and things seem to be well planned.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

No, we are from Germany. Harri showed us around already and loaned me his spare bike, which is pretty nice so we did some cycling. We are still plannig the second part of our trip after the World Games from sunday to thursday. Do you have a specific reccommendation for a town at the gulf coast? Maybe somewhere where you can still ride your bike a little bit. Thank you for your tips so far, they have been very helpful.

Im probably the loan duathlete on the forum who actually knows about your girlfriend. :) Good luck to Merle! Hopefully she will be in Zofingen again this year.

Oak Mountain has been mentioned, but nobody said it's the venue for an excellent mtb race, an excellent Xterra, and the 2013 ITU World's Cross Tri Championships.

The lake is lovely for swimming, the mountain bike trail is top-notch, and good trail running if you're into that sort of thing.

Viel gluck fur deine Frau!


*At a restaurant after the Xterra, I ordered unsweet iced tea, and the waitress said "oh honey, you ain't from around heah, are ya?" I said "no ma'am, how did you know?" "You ordered unsweet tea, and that's just not natural."

So... please don't judge the rest of the US on Alabama! :-)

We did exactly what you suggested and rented an AirBnB at Oak Mountain right Next to a lake. Are there any alligators?

Merle is ready for tomorrow but this is her first draft-legal duathlon and she is a better cyclist than runner so we dont have any expectations but we are grateful for having this experience at the World Games.

Alligators are pretty rare up near Birmingham. I've never heard of any at Oak Mountain State Park. I've swim there plenty and would not hesitate to swim there again.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores is your place to bike and see the beach if you make it down to the Alabama coast. They have 20+ miles of trails and a large beach pavilion you can use as your home base. Infinity Cycles is almost adjacent to the park and you can rent a bike there. Unfortunately with all the rain the Gulf Of Mexico will be murky so take that in to account.
Fairhope, AL is an artsy town about 45 minutes from Gulf Shores and you can rent a bike from Pro Cycle if the beach doesn’t work out.
Huntsville or Chattanooga are cool towns north of Birmingham so you may want to head that way if the beach isn’t calling your name.

I totally agree with your post. Actually, I'd already communicated with Bentus and recommended Gulf State Park, Fairhope, and Mobile as a several day destination (among others). But I failed to think about Chattanooga or Huntsville.

Meanwhile, in about 10.5 hours. GO MERLE!!!

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

Make sure you have Dreamland BBQ while you're there.

We had a nice time in Birmingham. Right now we are staying at an very nice AirBnB at the Logan Martin Lake. Thursday we will fly back Home.

I'm a Bham local. Since your girlfriend raced, can I get your thoughts and feedback on the women's duathlon having half the field DQ'd because of (supposedly) going off course. There's been a some speculation about what happened but I haven't heard any definite reason. Some of the post event chatter among the Bham tri community was general disapproval of the bike course, too many turns, too much like a crit race course. They must have fixed whatever the issue was because the men's race layer in the day didn't have any DQ's.

The venue was fine but there were zero race marshals on the bike course and the course wasnt marked at all. That is why the big second group went the wrong way in the first bike lap and unintentionally cut the course three times. They all got disqualified then after finishing the race, Merle included. The small front group of five ladies had a lead motor bike, that is why they went the right way. But all the other groups got sent the wrong way and that is why this big mess happened. It is pretty sad because a lot of effort went into this from all parties involved but the course should have been better prepared and at least be marked with some arrows on the street. In the end, the womens race was a farce due to that.

Merle had a very nice race in her first draft legal duathlon ever. She missed the front group by 2mins on the first run with a 36:45min for the 10k, which is only 1 min slower than her PB. On the bike she could close the gap to Lotte Claes, a very strong biker from Belgium and then it was a very easy ride for her (basically easy ride power). She then had the fifth fastest second run (3:36min/k) in very hot and humid conditions. I am sure that they could have closed the gap to the front group without cutting the course, but we will never know. All in all, Birmingham has been a very nice experience.