Last day in New Orleans and on to Lafayette

Beth lived outside of NO when she was in middle school.  Her dad had worked for the Border Patrol and he had to check the paperwork of the men on the ships as they came into the port of NO.  The family lived in Marrero, just on the other side of the Mississippi.  We found the house, and, other than having been painted white (Beth has pictures of it with red brick), the house is much as she remembers it and the neighborhood looked very good as well.

After this we went to the Lafette National Park natural area.  This was the area where he ran his pirating operations.  This was a swampy area with typical cypress trees and hanging Spanish moss.

We returned to NO to pick up the RV and head out of town.  We were able to get a birds-eye view from the expressway.  Our RV is the one closest to the gate.

We left the Big Easy at noon and drove to Lafayette, which is to the west of Baton Rouge.  This is roughly in the middle of the Cajun area of Louisiana.  The "Cajun" people are roughly descendants of French-speaking Acadians from Canada.  They had been expelled by the British in 1765 or so, as part of one of the many wars between England and France.  We visited an Acadian cultural center and starting playing some Cajun tunes on local instruments!.

For dinner we went to a local place and let some professionals provide the music.

The next day we drove to Avery Island, home of Tabasco sauce!  We had a tour of the factory and spent a good deal of time in the gift shop, sampling the seven flavors of Tabasco as well as Tabasco flavored mustard, salsa, pickles and ice cream!  Yummy.

 This picture says they were doing labels for Belgium.  They sell Tabasco in 160 countries.

As we drove there we asked ourselves why we were doing this.  What kind of people go to a food factory?  Well, it was interesting and educational (and we got some food!).  The guide said that during the busy season they have over 800 visitors per day, so I guess we are not so unique in our interests!

We also visited St. Martinsville, a little town that is said to be the place where the story that inspired Longfellow's poem of Evangeline took place.  This is the story of a young couple who were separated when the Acadians were forced to move to Louisiana.  Evengeline and her fiancee were on different ships. She spent years looking for her fiance (Gabriel) and eventually located him in this town.  But years had passed he he was already married, with children.  Yikes! There is an "Evangeline oak tree" and a statue or two.

To complete our trip to this section of Louisiana, we took a swamp tour in a small boat.  We were able to see lots of wild life, including alligators and a nutria (an animal related to the rat, from South America).

 As we travel, we try to expose ourselves to the "local culture," both high and low.  Around Lafayette, the local favorite food appears to be something called Boudin.  This is a mixture of pork and rice and spices in a sausage casing.  There are "Boudin and Cracklin" stores all around the town so we just had to stop in and sample the food.  Here is Matthew enjoying the "local culture."

Two thumbs up on the Boudin.  Thumbs down on the cracklin'!  It's pig skin and fat, fried in oil.  Ugh.

Day two in New Orleans

Tuesday in the Big Easy

We are very interested in National Parks, both for the opportunity to learn things and for Matthew to get stamps for his passport book and Junior Ranger badges.  The wide open spaces are not the only places with National Parks.  Downtown NO has two - one for Jazz and one for Jean Lafitte, the privateer who helped Andrew Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.  We walked to the Jean Lafitte one first and here is Matthew receiving his Jr. Ranger badge.

It so happens that Cafe du Monde is on the way to the Jazz National Park office so we just had to stop in for beignets.  There was some commotion going on around the Cafe, with people in the street, big movied lights, and an artificial rain maker.  It turns out Woody Harrelson was filming a movie in Cafe du Monde!  We offered to pay for this beignets but he wouldn't hear of it. Just kidding!  He was surrounded by people.

We were still able to enjoy our beignets.  Afterwards we walked around the back and were able to see how they are made.

All that education and eating made us hungry so we talked to a great place for local sandwiches called muffalettas, as shown in the following picture.

These are made with a circular loaf of bread (about as big as a plate), cut in half and filled with Italian-style cold cuts and cheese and covered with an olive salad.  Yummy, at least for Bill.  You can check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muffaletta

Here's a friend Beth made on the way to lunch.

In the afternoon we went to hurricane Katrina-related presentation and Mardi Gras display at a state museum.  And we attended at jazz mini-concert at a former US Mint. Again, all that learning made us hungry.  We took a bike taxi to a restaurant on the other side of the French Quarter.  It turns out that our driver/cyclist Heather graduated from Case Western University in Cleveland (where Bill's sister Kim works).  She was not from Ohio however.  She was from Lebanon, New Jersey, where Bill and Beth lived after getting married!  Such a small world! 

Another small world thing is that we met a family at the jazz concert with young kids.  We have noticed that there are very few (almost none) children at any of the places we've been, because they're all in school!  It turns out this other family is taking a year to travel around the country and the are home-schooling (RV-schooling, actually) their 4th and 6th grade kids.  They are staying in the same RV park where we are staying!


I shouldn't really say RV park or camp for where we stayed.  The name was "French Quarter RV Resort," and in many ways it was the nicest place we've stayed.  There was a pool and hot tub.  There were personal bathrooms and showers.  Nice!

Our first day in New Orleans

We arrived on Sunday with a small degree of stress.  Beth had hoped that Sunday traffic would be the lightest of the week.  This is what greeted us.

There was some construction on the main interstate from Baton Rouge into town (which forced us off that road onto regular city streets, ugh).  Driving a 10 foot wide RV towing a Jeep was rather stressful.  Maybe this will be good preparation for when we're in California.  But this traffic was only a few miles and we were back on I-10, flying along, seeing things like the Superdome and the following, which is more or less next to our RV site.

This is one of the oldest cemeteries in New Orleans.  Many of the graves are above ground.  If you look closely, you can see some RVs on the left side of the picture. That's where we stayed.  And on the right you can see a pointy tower in the distance.  That is St. Louis Cathedral, overlooking Jackson Square, one of the centers of activity in the French Quarter.  We had a great location - walking distance to the French Quarter.

We had dinner at one of the many fine dining establishments in the French Quarter, Oceana.  It seems that most of the restaurants specialize in seafood (with some Cajun, or Creole, or new Orleans flavor, of course) and Matthew is not especially fond of seafood (or onions), so that presents something of a problem, but we generally could find a hamburger or Po-boy (a southern-style sub).


Monday

One of the things Matthew has been looking forward to most on this trip is the beignets (French donuts) served at Cafe du Monde.  We walked there in the morning and they met all of his high expectations!

Cafe du Monde is on one of the busiest streets in the French Quarter.  It is just off Jackson Square and maybe 100 yards from the Mississippi River.  Jackson Square is named after Andrew Jackson who was in NO during the War of 1812 and is credited with a major victory in this battle which was fought a little while AFTER the peace treaty had been signed.  He is a major hero here.

We spent the morning walking around the French Quarter and seeing the interesting French-inspired architecture.  We also noticed the decorations for Mardi Gras.  We also spent time in the French Market, an open-air food and trinket market.

 This was a store dedicated to hot sauce!

This is Joan of Arc, in shiny gold.  The locals call this Joany on a pony.

One of the things that NO is known for is the very loose life-style and love of music.  We came across some musicians playing Cajun music in the street.

In the afternoon we took a city tour in a small van.  The driver was a life-long resident of NO and he filled us with many stories.  We covered much of the same ground in the French Quarter that we had walked in the morning, but then we drove to the residential section that had been hit the worst by Katrina, the Lower 9th Ward.  The water had been 20 feet deep in this area.  Singer Fats Domino had a home and recording studio in this area and he and his wife were there during the storm.  This is his re-built house. You can see the FD on his house.

Here are some other scenes of this area.  It's a mixture of re-built homes, deserted homes, and empty lots.  About 100,000 people who fled the city because of Katrina never returned.  Our guide mentioned that some local celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Harry Conick Jr.  have been active in re-building and financing projects.

We also got of a tour of one of the largest cemeteries in NO.  There are a number of celebrities here.  Just as some people are showy in life, some are showy in death.  The founder of Popeye's Chicken was a local NO guy and he's buried here.  For his funeral he had a number of his "toys" brought to the cemetery, such as boats and cars.   Not sure which picture has his grave.  Many of these sites cost over a million dollars.