We're on a 2700-kilometre road trip, looking for love. Well not love, actually, but romance. From Louisiana's bayous, through Mississippi and Alabama backcountry across Georgia into North Carolina, then down again to the sultry Lowcountry, we're in search of the Deep South's most romantic towns.
Through six states we roll, the highways and byways unspooling behind us, following the path of Ol' Man River, picking seven places we love, knowing we could have picked 70.
From the exuberant sexiness of New Orleans to the high style of Charleston to laid-back Asheville to classic antebellum Madison and Covington, to the gorgeous excess of Savannah and clean-cut Oxford, each offers a different aspect of Southern romanticism.
Travelling with us are our memories, built from the music, movies and books of our youth. "In my mind I'm going to Carolina", we sing. "He's leaving on the midnight train to Georgia."
But we admonish ourselves to not simply respond to "romantic emotionalism". For no visit to the South can be complete without acknowledging its troubled past – slavery, the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement of the '60s, and more recently, the Charleston massacre.
So it has to be a more complex definition of the word, more to do with desire, ultimately a celebration of life in all its splendour and imperfection. That's the definition I'm going with.
Graham Greene wrote of Saigon's melancholic mystical intensity as something that "permeates the colours, the taste, even the rain". He could have been referring to the American South.
Writers have long explored how the antebellum (pre-Civil War) South's romance and aristocratic elegance were built on lies and slavery. In Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois' doomed ancestral plantation is named Belle Reve – beautiful dream.
The South is indeed a beautiful dream, a sensory overload of luscious vegetation, perfumed air and creamy mansions with styles layered one atop the other, but there's no escaping the genesis of that opulence.
And so we roll, eating fried green tomatoes at The Whistle Stop Cafe, sleeping soundly in Suite Home Alabama, crossing Moon River, wider than a mile, discovering that unlike Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind, we do give a damn about this amazing sweep of America.
Our journey begins in New Orleans, that rambunctious Southern city that isn't truly Southern. NOLA actor Wendell Pierce calls it "the northernmost Caribbean city and the last Bohemia". Its "laissez les bon temps rouler" (let the good times roll) character means the romanticism is earthy not demure.
And wouldn't you know, we've arrived accidentally, along with a million others, into the midst of a whole lotta lovin'. It's the 44th Southern Decadence Weekend, celebrated this year, among other things, with the festival's first same–sex marriage, after the US Supreme Court threw out Louisiana's ban.
Thank the lord we're staying on the fringe of the French Quarter rather than on boisterous Bourbon Street. We're in the European-style Windsor Court Hotel, high above the celebrations, soothed with Mississippi River views, plied with melon mojitos and cocktail bar jazz before plunging back into the joyous melee.
There's nothing stuck-up about this fizzing city, whose style is French, Spanish, Creole and Cajun. It's a magnificent mess of coconut ice double-shotgun houses, chic blue-and-white street tiles, copper gas lamps, and secret courtyards, threaded with music to melt the soul.
From Faubourg Marigny's Frenchmen Street to Treme, Bywater and Bourbon Street, music, from uptown to "backatown" jazz, defines the city. We can't get enough of the exuberant food either – upmarket R'evolution for stylish Louisiana cuisine, Red Fish Grill for Cajun gulf fish and lump crabmeat, Marigny Brasserie for spicy woodfired redfish and crowdwatching.
NOLA's delirious joie de vivre is even more remarkable given that a mere ten years ago Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. The ensuing aid delivery scandal prompted the famous Kanye West accusation that "George Bush doesn't care about black people". But NOLA shows that wounds can heal.
With bags full of Mardi Gras beads, we leave NOLA, driving our rented Chevy to the levee, literally. Spaghetti highways skim the bayous, spitting us onto Mis'sippi' – land of "Jesus Loves You" billboards and good ol' boys in giant pickups.
Oxford was named after the real Oxford in the hope it would become a university town. It did. The University of Mississippi or Ole Miss rose up grandly in 1848, its campus sometimes dubbed "the nation's most picturesque". Oxford practically staggers under the weight of wisteria and Southern hospitality.
This "cultural Mecca of the South" was Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner's home. He set many of his novels here, including The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. When it's not flooding with alumni headed for an Ole Miss football game, it floods with Faulkner devotees making the pilgrimage to Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home.
On a dark note, Ole Miss erupted in fatal riots in 1962 during the Civil Rights Movement when its first African-American student, James Meredith enrolled. Now there's a statue to honour him.
Seeking directions from a friendly local, his Mis'sippi drawl momentarily puzzles us: "Ya gotta make the skwayar," the man instructs. Luckily we've read Bill Bryson's Lost Continent and the penny drops. "Ah, you mean walk around the square?" He nods happily: "Y'all come back now, y'hear?" We will.
Farewelling the Mississippi River, we drive east through Alabama into Georgia, one of the South's loveliest states full of Gone With the Wind antebellum history, headed for Madison, described in 1845 as "the most cultured and aristocratic town on the stagecoach route from Charleston to New Orleans".
This is the town Union General Sherman, careless with his matches in Atlanta, judged too pretty to burn on his Civil War March to the Sea.
That may be a myth but Madison, an hour from Jonesboro, setting for Gone with the Wind's Tara, is too pretty to burn. Planted firmly on the 160-kilometre Antebellum Trail between Athens and Macon, 200-year-old Madison is a living history museum of the grand days of King Cotton's reign.
In 1850, the area was "in high cotton", the slave crop bringing riches to Southern planters, who built townhouses to augment their plantations. As the money rolled in, the nouveau riche enhanced their "Plantation Plain" houses with white-columned Greek Revival, Gothic Revival and every other kind of revival additions.
Almost all the Southern American antebellum styles are found among the 100 restored homes encircling the historic square – which itself boats an impressive Beaux Arts county courthouse where Tom Cruise was recently filming.
A 2.25-kilometre walking tour (get the app or brochure from the Welcome Centre) will introduce you to history, from Boxwood – a high point of antebellum architecture to Rogers House Museum, a Piedmont Plain home, the rootstock of antebellum residential design.
We're happily ensconced at the James Madison Inn, each of whose 19 lovely rooms is named for a landmark Madison home. We're in Thurleston, once a simple Piedmont-style farmhouse now mightily embellished. The Inn directs us to nearby Town 220 for a tender, swoonworthy Oregon sirloin dinner. How romantic is that?
And Madison doesn't take itself entirely seriously. We're pleased to note a sign on a gorgeous Academy Street mansion gently parodying the more earnest historic markers: "At this location on this same day in 1861, absolutely nothing happened."
"Nirvana in the mountains," or "Southern Shangri-La" are fair descriptions of Asheville in Appalachia's Blue Ridge Mountains. People came for the restorative climate in the 1800s and kept coming, drawn by the vistas, altitude, and more recently, the arty sophistication.
Asheville's accolades are many and include the endearing "best place to reinvent your life". Since the Vanderbilts arrived in the late 1800s, building their massive French chateau, Biltmore Estate, the town has welcomed all sorts. That inclusiveness is evident in the generosity of our lodging hosts – Jim and Christina Muth, originally from Maryland. (Neighbours hail from San Francisco, Boston and Atlanta).
They've transformed Beaufort House Inn, their 1894 Queen Anne Victorian, with 11 exquisite guests rooms, into a microcosm of Asheville – full of discussion, laughter and fine food. We're in the Rose Room with its ornate fireplace, clawfoot bathroom and elegant curved windows. Charlton Heston lived here in 1949, before Hollywood rendered him bigger than Ben Hur. The char marks on the hardwood floors are from his ciggies – the slob.
Christina's gourmet breakfasts in the dining room overlooking the gardens are a delight – think Sumatran coffee, light-as-air biscuits (scone-muffins) with whipped cream and strawberries in syrup, scrambled egg filo baskets and rosemary sweet potatoes. A guest spotted photographing Christina's breakfast turned out to be the White House food and beverage manager, gaining inspiration!
Guests can help themselves to beer, biscuits, caramels, ice and water bottles. Happy hour between five and six and breakfast is when people share stories.
Asheville's Art Deco town buildings are preserved; there are artist precincts, small bars pumping out eclectic music, terrific restaurants sourcing local produce, even regular town "drum circles" as the old hippies come to play.
Down off the mountains we beetle, headed for Atlantic coast Lowcountry and Charleston. The genteel city with a hip edge is revered for its dreamy coconut-ice French Quarter and Battery antebellum mansions, cobblestoned streets, horse-drawn carriages and Charleston harbour's Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War rang out.
Charleston doesn't merely make a top romantic town of the south list, as all the others do. Travel+Leisure magazine has just named it North America's number one city. And it is gorgeous – not just in an old-time historic way, though there's much of that in the pastel mansions south of Broad Street, and the magnolia, oak and honeysuckle-lined streets. The city also has big-time style found in the edgy culinary scene, trendy boutiques of King Street and chic accommodation.
Our hotel, Zero George Street, a collection of five restored buildings dating from 1804, epitomises this – southern sophistication with a contemporary feel – a Conde Nast Traveler magazine "Top Five Foodie Hotel in the world". Decor in the 18 suites draws from Charleston's history as a colonial port with European connections.
Zero George Cafe + Bar head chef Vinson Petrillo uses seasonal local ingredients for his contemporary dishes, prepared in full view in the guest reception kitchen carriage house kitchen with its French enamel cooking range. Zero George isn't alone in its sophisticated offerings – other restaurants like Husk and Fig also occupy the culinary spotlight.
A visit to Charleston demands a quiet moment at downtown's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church where nine people died in June during a racially motivated shooting. The killings prompted successful calls to remove the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina Statehouse.
A short hop across the state line and we're back in the Peach State, Georgia. Savannah has a mercurial soul – sometimes sultry, sometimes sophisticated, sometimes just a little disreputable. It's one of my favourites, not just because of its 22 beautiful English-style squares, fountains and Spanish moss-draped oaks, but also because of its hospitality and charming superstitions. America's number one haunted city is built on a necropolis of those who died in the Siege of Savannah, the Revolutionary War's bloodiest battle. Add to that fires, hurricanes and epidemics. Look for "haint" blue-painted ceilings that are said to keep away bad spirits, as do the endearing dolphin downpipes.
Savannah is definitely not a toy town – it has experienced much, and endured not just as a fine town but also as a major working port on the Savannah River. Take a trolley tour and riverboat cruise to learn more of the city's heritage. Savannah sprang up in 1733 as a place for England's working poor and a buffer zone against the Spanish in Florida. Slavery was forbidden then, as were lawyers, but when "high cotton" hit, slavery was legalised to maximise wealth. Today, it's a cosmopolitan, walkable city, with an impeccably preserved history. But Savannah isn't stuck in the past – just visit the bistros and taste the coffee. We're in the middle of the cobblestoned historic district, comfortably ensconced at the Presidents' Quarters whose guestrooms are named for visiting presidents. Ours is James Monroe, a huge corner room with substantial windows and a high four-poster. Breakfast and wine and cheese hour are a chance to meet people and chat to the knowledgeable staff.
For an exploration of Savannah's African-American heritage, join Johnnie Brown's Freedom Trail Tour to see remnants of the Underground Railroad, the places where "free persons of colour" lived during slavery times, slave markets and more.
From Savannah we drive north to Covington, "Hollywood of the South", 30 minutes east of Atlanta. Movies like In the Heat of the Night, My Cousin Vinny, Sweet Home Alabama, Dukes of Hazzard, and Remember the Titans have been filmed here, including the popular Vampire Diaries.
So it's fitting we should be staying in The Twelve Oaks. This grand 1836 antebellum beauty home was the inspiration for Tara in Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell suggesting it for Ashley's home. We're in Suite Home Alabama (all eight suites are named for movies, including Frankly Scarlett and Breakfast at Tiffany's) and Twelve Oaks is much sought-after for locations.
Covington is Mystic Falls in Vampire Diaries, and an episode was filmed at the house. Billy Bob Thornton has scouted it for a location, and Cindy Crawford has also filmed there. Our suite boasts a giant feather bed, ornate carved headboard and dressers, gold velvet armchair and footstool Scarlett O'Hara would swoon over, chandelier, mushroom velvet drapes, cherub paintings and the piece de resistance – silver claw-foot bath overlooking the garden.
It is a place for indulgence and we happily indulge. As Scarlett would say, "Tomorrow is another day." Sadly that day has come – time to farewell our Chevy and the South, flying out of Atlanta.
Filmed in the early 8os in Beaufort, South Carolina in the same house used for The Great Santini, The Big Chill is about the loves and lives of college friends reunited after a suicide, which, granted, isn't terribly romantic. But seminal music from the 60s and 70s evokes that melancholy remembrance of things past.
Margaret Mitchell's sweeping tragi-romantic epic about the Deep South explores the changes wrought by the American Civil War. David O. Selznick fashioned the film with Vivien Leigh as Southern belle, Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.
Even wars can be romanticised. Augustus Saint-Gaudens' glistening golden statue in Grand Army Plaza, New York shows Sherman in a classical equestrian pose with winged Victory striding ahead. Brought down a peg though by a Southern lady who commented: "Ain't it just like a Yankee to make the lady walk".
Possibly the most musical river in the world, Old Muddy has inspired countless lyrical songs including Ike & Tina Turner's Proud Mary, Ol' Man River from Showboat, Greg Brown's Mississippi Moon, Johnny Cash's Big River and J.J. Cale's Down to Memphis.
Bird Girl, made famous on the cover of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, is heartbreakingly beautiful and, by definition, romantic. While Berendt's book exposed Savannah society's darkness, Bird Girl is simply mesmerising. The 1936 bronze sculpture by Sylvia Shaw Judson is at the Jepson Centre for the Arts, a Savannah museum worth seeing in its own right.
Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook is a romantic tearjerker with star-crossed lovers separated by parents, the movie being filmed in Charleston and Georgetown. Live the dream by fine dining at High Cotton Restaurant on East Bay Street where Noah spotted his lost love Allie with her fiance, alas. If you're not a Notebook fan, concentrate on the Lowcountry, high-style food and surrounds.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is Last of the Mohican territory – a 755-kilometre scenic drive through Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks. Enjoy azure peaks, lush wetlands and spectacular hiking paths. Sit atop a mountain with a loved one? You may never come down.
Yes, everyone does it, and why not. Take a late-night spin with a glass of champagne on the Carousel Bar's whimsical circus merry-go-round, knowing that a welter of Southern writers like Hemingway, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams have spun there too.
Visit Moon River, wider than a mile … Moon River wasn't Moon River when musician Johnny Mercer grew up there but the district was subsequently named in honour of his lyrical song. Only 20 minutes from downtown, the enchanting area offers stories about the Lowcountry, the river people and the saltmarshes.
Tucked away in the Grove Arcade – one of Asheville's architectural jewels and haunt of F. Scott Fitzgerald – is the book exchange and champagne bar. What a pleasure it is to wander there at sundown to browse the books, then sip champers while sampling their cheese plate.
MORE INFORMATION
neworleanscvb.com
exploreasheville.com
charlestoncvb.com
visitsavannah.com
exploregeorgia.org
Qantas flies daily return from Sydney and Melbourne to Los Angeles or Dallas, then codeshares with American Airlines or United to New Orleans (about 21 hours). See qantas.com.au.
The Windsor Court Hotel, New Orleans, doubles from $448; see windsorcourthotel.com. The Hampton Inn, Oxford, doubles from $122; see hamptoninn3.hilton.com. The James Madison Inn, Madison, doubles from $159; see jamesmadisoninn.com. Beaufort House Inn, Asheville, doubles from $139; see beauforthouse.com. Zero George Street, Charleston, doubles from $419; see zerogeorge.com. Presidents' Quarters, Savannah, doubles from $189; see presidentsquarters.com. Twelve Oaks B&B, Covington, doubles from $199; see thetwelveoaks.com.
