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Saturday, February 09, 2008

Cedar Grove, Vicksburg

This weekend we stayed at Cedar Grove Mansion, a bed and breakfast in Vicksburg, Miss., on a trip for my work. We had a two room suite in the bed and breakfast complete with chandeliers and antique furniture. Cedar Grove, which survived Union bombardment during the Battle of Vicksburg, still has a cannonball lodged in one wall of the living room.

Unfortunately I have a rant about Vicksburg. We have spent an unusual amount of time there in the last year. You may recall from this blog that we visited there in June 2007 for my birthday, we traveled there in December 2007 for Jalissa's wedding, and finally were there this past weekend for a business meeting. I have now dubbed Vicksburg "the town that customer service forgot." It all kind of crystalized recently that we were getting pretty bad service there at every turn - at convenience stores, at restaurants, at hotels, at buffets, at casinos, at the Mississippi welcome center. The most glaring example is in my planning for the business meeting, I had to call the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau to ask a question. I was put on hold for a long time; then the person returned and said she was too busy to help me and could I call back? Needless to say, I did not call back.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Amen Sister!

Todd said...

When I asked for the key to the "Fitness Center" from the ladies at the front desk, it got a chuckle. Then, I realized what they were laughing about. About the best exercise you can get at Cedar Grove is walking the long myriad of stairs and walkways up the hill to get TO the "Fitness Center." I use that term very loosely. When I went back down to ask if I could ride one of the bicycles, they really started laughing. "You want to bike ride... in Vicksburg?" They said those bikes had not been ridden since 1992, but they would send maintenance up there to try and get one of them working. After he got a good laugh about it, also, he told me I should just go to the YMCA. He then proceeded to give me bad directions which, for once, I followed perfectly. At least the bad directions took me right to the entrance to the military park where I was able to pay my $8 and park and run.