I worked in Birmingham for 8 months back in '95.
It's definitely a much slower pace down there. I found that people were very friendly, even to Yanks.
The Alabama Gulf coast is an underrated gem, or at least it was back then. Not sure what Katrina did to the Alabama gulf coast.
NASA has the US Space and Rocket Center up north in Huntsville which is also where Space Camp is - a very cool tour.
Lots of cool stuff is a couple of hours away - Great Smokey Mountains, Nashville, Memphis, Pensacola/Tallahassee, Atlanta as has been mentioned.