Top 10 Things To Do
Eat at a famous restaurant: There are a lot of wonderful restaurants from which to choose. One of the newest has one of the biggest names in the food business. Emeril Lagasse, whose wife is from Gulfport, opened Emeril's Gulf Coast Fish House at the Island View Casino in 2007. The oldest is Mary Mahoney's in Biloxi. The restaurant was established in 1964 in a building constructed around 1737. In 2006, Olives, owned by world-renowned chef Todd English, opened at the Beau Rivage. At the time of its opening in 2006, there were only five other Olives restaurants in the world.
Play at a famous golf course: The Coast has long been a golfing destination for the rest of the country. And while there are about 18 courses from which to choose, you can't get much bigger than Jack Nicklaus (Grand Bear Golf Course), Arnold Palmer (The Bridges Golf Club), Davis Love III (Shell Landing Golf Club), Jerry Pate (The Preserve Golf Club) and Tom Fazio (Fallen Oak Golf Course) when it comes to golf and golf course design. Another famous first: The Bridges Golf Club is the first resort course in the world to be granted the Audubon Silver Signature Status by Audubon International.
Indulge at a famous nightclub: We've got more nightclubs than you can shake a martini shaker at, but two are especially high on the famous list. Rise at Hard Rock-Biloxi, is one of the latest developed by the Gerber Group - whose famed bars include The Whiskey in Las Vegas, Stone Rose in Los Angeles and Whiskey Blue in New York. And EIGHT75 at the Beau Rivage has regularly been ranked as one of the country's best hotspots by national trade magazine Nightclub & Bar in its annual Top 100 rankings.
Go to a famous museum/attraction: The Mississippi Coast is home to artists who continue to gain international recognition. The Walter Anderson Museum of Art is dedicated to the celebration of the works of Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965) whose depictions of the plants, animals, and people of the Gulf Coast have placed him among the forefront of American painters of the 20th century; and to his brothers, Peter Anderson (1901-1984), master potter and founder of Shearwater Pottery; and James McConnell Anderson (1907-1998), noted painter and ceramist. The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art is dedicated to the work of potter George Ohr. The new museum, which is being rebuilt on Beach Boulevard in Biloxi, is designed by internationally recognized architect Frank Gehry, who personally has collected work by Ohr. The Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Gulfport, has been named one of America's Top 50 children's museums. Other famous attractions are Beauvoir, the last home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis; the Biloxi Lighthouse on Beach Boulevard, built in 1848 and the first cast-iron tower in the South; or stop by the Biloxi Artesian Bottling Works, the original bottling plant for Barq's Root Beer, at 224 Keller Ave., Biloxi. (You can't go in, but you can see the house and the historical marker).