6 best things about cruising the Mississippi River

The Deep South is at once gothic and glamorous, steeped in history, hauntings and a hell of a lot of soul. I sailed through the swamplands of Louisiana and the bible belt blues of Mississippi on an eight-day Viking Mississippi Delta Explorer voyage between New Orleans and Memphis. 

These are the parts I’ll never forget.

1. Southern hospitality is a very real thing

“Thank you ma’am. I gotcha ma’am.” That’s what Nate, a good Southern boy from Alabama and a member of the Viking crew, says each time he scans our keycard as we enter and exit the ship. Southern charm is a delightful thing to be around (Australians, with our grunted ‘g’days’ and ‘how ya goings’ must have them reaching for the smelling salts). On land, tour guides regularly bless our hearts, and urge us to ‘come back again, y’all!” at every parting. To Australians it might sound insincere. It isn’t. It’s just good Southern manners.

Southern hospitality abounds in river towns like Vickburg.

2. Your clothes will be tight

Southern cooks have never met a deep fryer they didn’t like. At the Soul Food and Blues tour in Natchez Mississippi, Chef Stella Fry loads us up on fried chicken, blackeyed peas cooked in bacon and sweet potato smothered in sugar, cinnamon and vanilla. In Vicksburg, I call into Rusty’s Riverfront Grill and feast on fried crawfish tails. Even the two restaurants on board - The Restaurant and The River Cafe - are full of unspeakably excessive indulgences like lobster mac & cheese, cheddar grits and pecan pie. A few laps around the walking track on Deck One each day is highly recommended.

The restaurant on board the Viking Mississippi features local specialities.

3. Every town has its ghosts

The South is haunted, no two ways about it. In New Orleans we visit the former home of Delphine LaLaurie, a woman of high society who is said to have tortured enslaved people in her attic. In the swamps of rural Louisiana a mass grave created after a devastating hurricane in 1915 thought to be haunted by a voodoo healer, Julie Brown, who predicted the town’s destruction. Our tour guide, Miss Judy, in Greenville Mississippi tells us that the town’s visitor’s centre has a ghost. “Strange things have happened,” she says mysteriously. It’s all part of the woo-woo Southern experience. 

The haunted swamp of Louisiana.

4. They pour generous in the USA

One evening, I order my favourite cocktail, a New Orleans sazerac in the ship’s Explorer’s Bar. I’ll be damned if two gigantic, overpoured shots of bourbon don’t go straight in. Americans regularly make their drinks this way, and it makes for quite the party. Viking’s ‘outside alcohol’ rules are also very relaxed: if you find a nice bottle of Bayou rum or Herbsaint liquor or any other kind of moonshine on shore, and you want to bring it back to enjoy in your room or at dinner, you can do so with no questions asked (and no corkage charges, either).

The tipple of choice on board is a Sazerac.

5. Getting on and off is a breeze

Because the Viking Mississippi never leaves the river - and therefore never goes outside the United States - disembarking and embarking at each stop is as sweet as a mint julep on the porch on a summer’s day. No passports, no ID, no scanning of bags. Just flash your room card and you’re right to go.

Getting on and off the Viking Mississippi is a breeze.

6. The south’s beautiful pain

Suffering is in the South’s DNA. The mass displacement of Native Americans during waves of colonisation. The desperate exile of the Arcadians from Canada before they found their way to the Louisiana bayous and became Cajuns. The tens of thousands of small town folk who died in the bloody battles of the Civil War, the thousands of homes decimated by hurricanes and floods and of course the countless enslaved people who grieved in the sugarcane fields and cotton plantations. You can feel those haunting centuries of misery in the air in every Southern state. 

But pain is also the root of much of the South’s rich culture and beauty. The unique spice and complexity of Cajun cooking. The literature of poverty and hardship from William Faulkner, Shelby Foote and Tennessee Williams. And of course the greatest of all American artforms: the Delta blues, invented by Mississippians like Muddy Waters, BB King and Charley Patton. 

It’s a land of deep contrasts and contradictions, held together by the great snaking ribbon, the mighty, muddy Mississippi. There’s nowhere like it on earth.

This writer was a guest of Viking Cruises. 

Originally published as 6 best things about cruising the Mississippi River