New Orleans Post #2

I forgot to mention in my previous post that it was raining really hard on Sunday night, so hard that Bourbon Street got flooded... and yet someone had sprinklers going on a bit of green space on Decatur. Was the grass really not getting enough water? If you hate water, Louisiana is not the state for you. The place is one big swamp.

Monday Travalon and I went to a plantation called Oak Alley, because someone back in the 18th century planted a double row of oak trees (28 in all) stretching down to the Mississippi River. Then in the 19th century a rich Creole built his plantation house at the end of the double row of trees. It was a beautiful plantation, and they are restoring the slaves' quarters so we can see how the slaves had to live. Then we went on a swamp tour called Cajun Pride, which was awesome. Our guide was a real Cajun who could spot snakes and alligators that we could barely see after he pointed them out. He even had a baby alligator with its mouth taped shut that he let us hold.A young pelican swam right by our boat, so I got a great shot of it that I will post at some point. A storm started brewing so we got off the bayou just in time; our tour could have gotten a lot more exciting, being on a metal boat with lightning flashing around us. Then Travalon and I drove to Biloxi, Mississippi and went to some casinos: Beau Rivage, which has a great Cajun/Creole buffet; the Hard Rock Cafe, which has lots of rock memorabilia; and Margaritaville, where they play Jimmy Buffett music all the time, and the theme is very tropical. I liked that one best, since it was not very crowded (being brand new) and so was quieter and less smoky. Plus I won $11 and some change on $1, and the bartender gave us free drinks. So that's the lucky casino, if you find yourself in Biloxi.

Yesterday we drove down to the bottom of the state, to a place called Grand Isle where all the houses are on stilts. It was a really chill place, and we got some genuine Cajun food down there, but by the time we found a guy who charters a fishing boat, it was too late to start out. We just took a walk by the beach instead. The highway to Grand Isle goes along a river, and we saw lots of shrimp boats on the way up and back. In the evening we returned to the French Quarter of New Orleans and got daiquiris, which are a big thing around here. We went to Preservation Hall, but there were so many people waiting in line to get in that we decided to go to Frenchmen Street instead, where we had dinner at a restaurant called the Praline Connection: we split a "soul food" platter with barbecued ribs, fried chicken, gumbo, jambalaya, gumbo, crawfish etouffe, greens, red beans and rice, and for dessert bread pudding with pieces of praline crumbled on top. I have no idea how one person could eat all that! Two of us could not quite finish the bread pudding. Then we went to the Spotted Cat and heard a couple of bands. There was a guy in the first band who had also been in the band at Fritzl's on Friday night and the band at Maison on Saturday night, so we figured he must play somewhere in the city every night of the week.

This was the first time I'd been in New Orleans with a car, and a word of warning to anyone planning to drive here: lots of roads are one way, and even the ones that aren't often don't allow left turns to be made onto them for reasons we could not understand. Figuring out how to get around town is a bit of a challenge, and of course parking in the French Quarter is not cheap. So that's what you can expect if you have a car in this city.

Famous Hat