Wednesday 22nd.. Mardi Gras is over, the streets have been cleaned ( as clean as they get, but that's another story ) and most of the people are heading out of town.

Today we moved from the Hilton Riverside to the Ramada Plaza, Inn on Bourbon. We got up and were heading out by about 10am and once again managed to check straight into the room.



Todays plan is to catch the St Charles Streetcar to the end of the line... so off we go to Walgreens to buy a $3 jazzy pass... probably should have just paid the $1.25 each way but we thought we'd be hopping on and off and maybe even doing the Canal St line as well. Silly us, it's all catching up with us a bit now I think, we didn't have the energy to get off and walk blocks when we could sit and watch it all through the window.



 I took lots of photos of all the gorgeous homes along the way and at the end we hopped off and found a lovely place called O'Henrys to have lunch. I had a cajun burger with a jalapeno roll, yum. It was actually a really nice day just sitting there on the verandah watching the world go by.

After lunch we got back on the streetcar with the intention, once again, of getting off and exploring a little but neither of us made a move to disembark so we ended up back at Canal St. A wander down a somewhat quieter and cleaner Bourbon St and we're back to our hotel. When I say cleaner, all the beads and rubbish had been removed but nothing can take the smell out of Bourbon St, it smells like old vomit, urine and alcohol no matter what they do to it!!! At one stage and enormous rat ran out of a drain in front of us, scurried up the footpath and disappeared under a gate! The other thing I noticed in New Orleans is they don't seem to have a food safety standard, everywhere else we went you'd see a letter A, B or C which is their certificate of hygiene on the outside window but there's nothing like that in NOLA.... I'm sure they clean but it seemed to me the floors everywhere were greasy and sticky ( well ok I know it was Mardi Gras time but still... really?? ), tiles looked like they used to once be white but are now an interesting shade of brown. One ladies room in a bar smelt like a long drop... but was actually a modern toilet room!! Now please understand this is not a complaint or criticism, just making an observation!!

Back to the motel for a short rest and we decided we'd like pizza for dinner so I googled it and found a couple of really nice looking places... we looked at the menus online and chose Louisiana Pizza Kitchen down near the French Market. As usual we made our way there at a leisurely pace, popping into a few establishments for refreshments... first stop was Pat O'Briens to try their famous Hurricane. Sitting at the outside bar another rat ran out from somewhere... crossed the walkway down beside the tables where people were eating and slipped back into a crack in the wall... no-one batted an eyelid!! Imagine the stink in Australia if that happened at a restaurant??!!



Next stop was the Good Friends bar.. once again a very friendly bar!! The bartenders were so cute together, and lots of other very "close" men! Yep, once again we picked the gay bar!! Definitely time to go have some dinner now.

When we got there and started talking to the waitress she immediately identified herself as a fellow Aussie... she's been in the states for 6 years now and has married a "local"... what are the chances? Rodd ordered a classic calzone and I ordered a mediterranean pizza and added pepperoni and OMG... this pizza is really good!!! Not as good as Buderim Pizzeria ( when it was open! ) but still pretty good.

That's the end of another day.... doesn't seem like we did much today really but we had a fun time.. only one more day in New Orleans, tomorrow is our Plantation day.

P.S.... I uploaded heaps of photos of the Plantation tour day thinking I'd do one blog for the last 2 days in NOLA but it's taken me 2 days to write the one days activity and upload pics!! Will post this now and add to it tomorrow!

Thursday 23rd Feb.. last day in New Orleans.... we are being picked up at 8am to go on a tour with Old River Road Plantation Tours. We went down to the hotel dining room to have some breakfast before heading out for the day, didn't want to risk room service again!



The bus was on time, with only a few people inside but he hadn't finished picking up so after driving around all over the place for another half hour the bus was full. The drive was probably about an hour with our driver/guide chatting constantly telling us all sorts of interesting facts about New Orleans, the soil composition, how they have to build to stop the place sinking, the history of the people. You can google it all if you're interested cos I'm not going to write it all out but believe me it was really interesting and it's an amazing area with a great history.

I had originally booked a tour of Evergreen Plantation but unfortunately it was closed for tours as a Hollywood production company was there filming a movie... I think Leonardo di Caprio is in it... the place was crawling with security and trailers as we drove past.



One pretty amazing fact was that cotton doesn't grow there.. conditions are just not right for it but we all expect cotton fields when watching a movie with Plantations and slaves. This cotton field is fake!! Every plant has been made and "planted" by the production team.. unreal eh? Especially as everyone on the bus was taking photos and saying "look... cotton fields!!"



First stop was Oak Alley.. for obvious reasons. It's very pretty and very "European". We looked around the house and the guide told us all about the family that lived there but I never really "felt" this place no matter how gorgeous it was. She did tell us a funny story about the candle stick"timer"... when a young man would come to call on the young lady of the house the father of the girl would size him up and light the candle...it would be wound up or down depending on how much he liked the prospective suitor. I meant to buy one of these candle holders at the gift shop but didn't get around to it!

The other plantation we visited was Laura... OMG I loved this place.. it's a Creole plantation and was run by generations of women which for those day is saying something! Our guide was so incredibly passionate about the history and the people, she had grown up in the area and was of creole descent herself, an american accent with a touch of a french accent... very lyrical and easy to listen to.

This place gave me goosebumps... the stories she told touched my heart and at one point I had to do everything in my power to refrain from breaking down in heartwrenching sobs! I'd recommend going here to anyone that visits New Orleans.

The drive back to the French Quarter was also very interesting with our guide never stopping to draw breath while he filled our minds and imaginations with all manner of tidbits of information. He'd start one story then say... oh, I must just tell you.. or he'd see something to point out so the story was put on hold, he'd start a different story then later say... right, I was telling you about..... we drove back a different way so saw quite a bit of the surrounding area. We drove over Lake Pontchartrain..

I think I said already that New Orleans is below sea level so most of the land is swampy.. the highway system built over all of that soggy soil is quite amazing. There's gators in there you know!!!

Time for lunch when we got back to town so we wandered down to Cafe Beignet and ordered Jamalaya... when it was ready we took it back to the motel room cos we were both pretty tired after our full mornings sightseeing. Problem was we assumed there would be cutlery in the bag... wrong... we could have done the easy thing and gone down to reception and asked for some but we didn't. What we did was open 4 of the condiments packs that come with the coffee, they have powered milk, sugar, serviette and a stirrer. The stirrer is hard plastic about the length of a pen and about as thick as a toothpick... armed with 2 each we ate our Jambalaya with our "chopsticks"... it worked, with a bit of effort and perseverence!!

I spent a few hours packing bags cos tomorrow we're moving to Orlando, then we wanted to go back to the pizza shop from last night.. it was soooo good! Not too much more of a story about this night except when we were sitting outside the restaurant waiting for our meals, after having chatted again to our Aussie waitress who remembered us from the night before... a man walked around the corner and was looking at the building.. I asked him if he'd eaten yet tonight... I'm sure he thought it was a strange thing to ask a perfect stranger but he replied "no" to which I said "well you should have dinner here, the pizzas are to die for"!!! I didn't quite know what to say when he replied with " well that's good to hear 'cos I'm the owner"!! He chatted to us for another 10 mins or so, I'm sure we made his night!

Well that's all for the New Orleans chapter.... I would love to spend some more time there way outside of Mardi Gras season, there's lots of great things to see and do, things we never had a chance to do.