On our Baton Rouge stop we visited the old Governor's House. In many ways it was similar to the plantation mansions that we have seen only this was built in the 1960's and had bathrooms for every bedroom and a ballroom. Each bedroom was decorated with furniture from one Governor, families had donated the furniture back to the Mansion. We heard many colourful stories about the various Governors.
We also stopped at the State Capitol Building, it was surrounded by lovely gardens and the view from the 27th floor were lovely. We could see over the city as well as view up and down the Mississippi.
We had an early start today on an excursion to three different plantations. The first, Nottoway was just opposite where the boat had moored and certainly was a grand looking plantation mansion with white columns out the front. It has rooms and cottages out the back that are used as a hotel and looks like a lovely place to stay with magnificent grounds and trees. All of the plantations in this area grew sugar cane but they harvested from the same crop up to 3 times per season.
The second plantation was called Oak Alley and had a magnificent stand of huge oak trees leading to the front of the house and behind it as well. The oak trees help funnel the cool breezes from the river. This plantation had a group of rebuilt slave cabins so that you could see and read about the conditions for the slaves. Naturally their conditions were small and cramped and disease at the time took many. They were worked long hours to harvest and extract the sugar from the cane.
Our third stop was at a plantation called Laura which was a Creole plantation rather than one run by whites. Its style of house was quite different and was run by the women of the family for generations. This was not the norm, just the way it worked for this family. Again, the slaves had built the mansion and worked in the house and the fields and were treated no better than on white plantations.
It's great that these things have been preserved for us to try and get a grasp of what it was like in the times before and after the Civil War.
Tonight is our last night on the boat and tomorrow we will do a tour of the city of New Orleans before going to our hotel and starting our own time in New Orleans and beyond.
We've enjoyed the cruise and met lovely people from Australia and the US. It's been great to relax as we've travelled down the Mississippi and seen the life along the river, but it will be good to be our own pilots as we spend a few more weeks down South!