Mount Vernon Travel Guide

My favorite restaurant is a local, downtown restaurant: Jimmy James Blue Goose on Main Street. It is a small Greek restaurant run by the Hassakis family. Small and limited menu but the food is good. They are only open for lunch and early afternoon hours, M-F.
The restaurant is small and cozy. Mrs. Hassakis has a heavy accent and is sometimes hard to understand. Her son, Jim, is much easier to understand. The restaurant is a favorite of the downtown law office crowd. Off street parking can be found about a half block west, to the west of the City Hall building.

Favorite Dish: GYROS!!! The spinach pie and greek salads are also very good. The daily specials are a good choice and Mrs. Hassakis' baklava is THE BOMB!!

Stay packed and ready to leave ASAP.
There must be a reason why this little town's population peaked back in the 1940s and despite annexing all of the surrounding area has once again declined in population as of the last census.

Numerous Local Churches. Avoid the South side of town..gunfire is daily. Drive under the posted speed limit...the whole town is a Giant Speed Trap and has more Black-dressed-cops with mustaches per capita than any other village in the United States.

The Jefferson County Historical Village on north 27th Street. (1411 N. 27th Street) We have quite a bit of early pioneer history around here and the village is reconstructed from authentic 19th century buildings. The hours are mostly daytime on weekends, it is run by volunteers. Spring and summer weekends often have blacksmithing and other lost craft demonstrations.

Favorite thing: Go to Genkota Winery (at Mt. Vernon exit) and Pheasant Hollow Winery (at Whittington/Sesser exit, about 12 miles south). Both have really friendly people, you can do wine tastings gratis and they have great gift baskets. Both put on Mystery Nights and have Gourmet Nights. Most summer weekends, Genkota has live jazz.

If you are a golfer, Green Hills is reported to be really good. Rend Lake's golf is also very good. If you are staying at the hotels along the interstate, there is a 9-hole course and mini-golf located at the end of the northwestern frontage road, just past Lonestar Steakhouse (Potomac Blvd.) that is really super close, you can see it along I-57/64 coming from the north. You can't get lost.

A trip to the Mitchell Museum (and sculpture park) is really a must if you like arts & culture. In the winter months they have a concert series with nationally-known string quartets and pianists and the summer has the Cedarhurst Arts Festival which draws around 30,000 people and has very up-scale crafts. Things like woodworking, metal arts, glass-blowing, jewelry. (September)

Mt. Vernon has a Tourist Information Center located on the northwest frontage (Potomac Blvd.) that has weekday and weekend hours.

Fondest memory: My fondest memory? Mt. Vernon is a great place to grow up.