oak alley and airboats

Saturday 30th June 2018

Today we started out early,  Debby picked us up at 8.30am for an hour drive to Oak Alley plantation.  It was an amazing house with lots of history and the guided tour certainly filled in all the relevant details for us.  We stayed there until 12pm until we had to travel to the airboat place for the gator experience. We were on a small boat that took only up to 8 people.  It went for 2 hours and was so much fun.  We saw quite a few aligators, one of which almost come up on the boat.  It was so much fun flying around the swamp in this v8 airboat.  After that we traveled for around an hour back to New Orleans and went to Cracker Barrel for dinner over the other side of the lake.  It was so nice,  the food was really good. 

After that we got dropped off at the hotel and then decide to go to Bourbon St for a look.  Ended up at a gay bar where the entertainment was twinky guys wearing jocks dancing on the bar (very classy of course).  You could tip them if you wanted but I kept my hands away. 

When it was time to leave the heavens opened up and it pissed down with rain.  We had to wait an hour but it didn't stop.  That made the 20 minute walk home lots of fun.  We got wet through. 

So the late night was not going to help the early start on Sunday at 9am.

paddle boat

Friday 29th June 2018

Big plans today with first doing a bus tour around New Orleans.  That was going to take 2 hours to drive around the different neighborhoods, to look where cyclone Katrina devastated the town back in 2005, one of the old cemeteries and a gin distillery.  Wasn't a bad trip at all to look at the different suburbs and housing around the town. 

After that we went to the Riverwalk to have some coffee and biegnets from Cafe Du Monde which was going to take place of lunch.  The Biegnets were pretty good if you like icing sugar but the cafe au lait was interesting, not like an aussie coffee.  We had booked a cruise on the paddle steamer  Natchez which included a buffet dinner.  We walked to the boat and it started to thunder and lightening and then rain.  That made the walk an experience. The cruise was nice.  It went from 6pm with the boat pulling out at 7pm and returning at 9. Great night, great views and lots of fun. Tomorrow we are going to visit a plantation and go air boat gator exploring.

new orleans and jet lag and super birthday surprises

Thursday 28th June 2018

After arriving in to LA at 7.30 am on Wednesday and then getting a connecting flight to New Orleans at 4pm we were slightly buggered and feeling tired as we had been on the go for about 28 hours.  After checking in to the Old 77 Hotel and Chandlery we went for a walk,  had early dinner, (Mmm fried chicken from Popeyes) we tried to get some sleep. 

Off to a slow start on Thursday and did a walk along the Mississippi River to the paddle steamer to get some ideas of what to do.  We walked back to the hotel and I was surprised to see a good friend waiting in the foyer. Debby had driven from Houston to stay the weekend in New Orleans with us.  Turns out Bronte and Debby had been planning this for a month. 

After that shock,  we went to the Riverwalk shops and got some new shoes.  We then had dinner at Butcher, which was a really funky cafe. 

It had been a long day so we went back to our room to see if we could get some sleep.