Friday was a very rainy, cloudy, wet day and with most of the downtown buildings still closed for the Thanksgiving Holiday, we took a gamble that some of the plantations and other tourist attractions were open and headed for White Castle, home of the Nottoway Plantation - A 150 year old sugar plantation that is still in operation today.

Nottoway was completed in 1859 forJohn Hampden Randolph and his wife, Emily Jane Liddell Randolph, and it was home to their eleven children. The mansion boasts 53,000 square feet, and originally sat on 400 acres of highland and 620 acres of swamp. It was designed by renowned architect Henry Howard of New Orleans in Greek Revival and Italianate style. As well as being open to the public for tours, it also offers bed and breakfast accommodation.

After the tour we headed back to the hotel where we decided it was time to have our hair cut....... at Walmart!! I let Ant go first and nearly had a heart attack when she practically scalped him!!! I decided to be brave and let her loose on my hair - luckily it didn't turn out too bad in the end.

The weather was a lot better today although very cold with the temperature having fallen to freezing overnight. Today was therefore a good day to take a trip up to the 27th floor observation deck of the State Capitol building. The building was completed in 1932 in Art Deco style and has 34 floors - it is the tallest State Capitol in the US at 450 feet and is approached via a grand staircase with 48 steps, one step for each of the 48 states listed in order of admittance with Alaska and Hawaii being added to the top step when they were made states.

As the weather was so nice (and it was warming up), we headed east towards Lafayette where we stopped at a visitor centre / rest area on the Interstate. This is the most amazing visitor centre I have ever been to (and I've been to a lot). They had free local coffee and an exhibition and short film about the local river swamp - Atchafalaya. We had hoped to take a swamp tour but we had just missed the one we had read about. The very nice lady at the visitor centre recommended another local gentleman called Ernest Couret who was born and raised in the area and has been working the swamp for over 50 years!! There was just 4 of us on his 16 foot aluminium wide bottom boat for the 2 hour tour. We saw lots of herons, ospreys and cormorants, but unfortunately it was too cold for the alligators who were keeping warm at the bottom of the lakes and bayous. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful experience.

After the tour we continued into Lafayette where we found an amazing sea food restaurant called Don's Seafood Hut where I had a seafood salad consisting of fresh shrimp, crawfish and jumbo lump crabmeat and Ant had the Shrimp dinner which included shrimp gumbo, shrimp ettouffe (a spicy and delicious Cajun stew traditionally made with crawfish, vegetables and a dark roux served over rice) and stuffed shrimp, We are now extremely stuffed back in our hotel room watching films!!!!!