New Orleans Trip

This year, we decided to be brave and drive our new car to Alabama for the annual week at the Griffeth lakehouse.  We have always flown, but now that we have 2 kids and so much stuff, this seemed like the easier option.  It turned out great and we will definitely be doing it in the future!  The drive is only about 16 hours, and the halfway point is New Orleans.  Grant’s Aunt Aurelia lives there, so we were able to stay at her house at both the beginning and end of our trip.  We also squeezed in a little sight-seeing too!  It ended up being perfect.

Olivia . Aurelia . Dick . Madeline . Grant

Dick and Aurelia gave us tons of great sightseeing pointers and loaded my kids up with a huge bag of Mardi Gras necklaces.  They were so excited!

   

We spent the afternoon walking around the French Quarter, exploring, and eating lots of traditional New Orleans food.

The buildings in New Orleans are all SO beautiful!  So different from anywhere else that I’ve been.

 

Of course, we had to order virgin mint juleps while we were there….Mmm!

   

We also got beignets and chocolate milk at the famous Cafe du Monde.  They seriously LOAD up the beignets with a cupful of powdered sugar, and since it’s an outdoor cafe, the wind blows the sugar every which way.  The ground was COVERED in powdered sugar, as were our clothes and black stroller!  It was so funny! 

We didn’t ever intend to walk down Bourbon Street, but we unintentionally parked right next to it, so I had to snap a photo! 

Walking around the city was fun, but it was SO hot, humid, and crowded…Not a great place for little kids.  The highlight of our day was for sure our Alligator Swamp Tour—It was by far, one if the coolest things I’ve ever done!!

The boat ride was so picturesque…Straight out of a movie!!!  People actually stay in these tiny little shacks on the water to catch crawfish and who knows what else.  The only way to get to them is by boat, and none of them have electricity.  Crazy, right?!?

Our guide would spot the eyes of an alligator lurking in the water, and would throw a few marshmallows to get it’s attention.  Then, he would stick a hot dog on the end of a stick and dangle it out of the boat for the alligator to jump up and eat!!!  I was AMAZED at how beautiful these animals were, and I could not believe how close we got to them….Literally 2-3 feet away from where we were sitting.  There were a few times that the alligators jumped so high and bumped into our boat—These are STRONG animals, so it rocked us pretty wildly.  It was such a rush!

SCARY!!!!

 

We learned that in order to know how big the alligator is, you estimate how many inches the distance is between their eyes and the end of their nose….Then convert it to feet and that’s how long he is from nose to tail.  This one was about 11-12 feet long, but the biggest one we found was 14 feet!!!  He was HUGE!

I’m pretty sure this was our 14-footer:

So so beautiful.

I’ve truly never been in that much humidity in my life (and I’ve lived in Texas and Georgia!).  After a 2 hour boat ride, it looked like we had just stepped out of the shower.  We were DRENCHED with sweat.  So gross, I know!

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New Orleans, Part 2:

After a fabulous week at the lake, we stayed at Aurelia and Dick’s house once again.  It was my 25th birthday, so in order to make the tedious drive a little more exciting, we stopped off at a beautiful plantation home (called Oak Alley) from the slave era.  It was FASCINATING!

It was called Oak Alley because there were dozens of massive 3oo year old oak trees that lined the driveway up to the front door.  Sadly, most of them have since been cut down.

This amazing oak tree is one of the oldest in the state.  Isn’t it cool?!  Many of the branches extended so far out that they touched the ground so you could sit on them. I’m pretty sure our tour guide said it was 500 years old!  It’s crazy to think about what was going on in the world when this tree first started to grow.

This amazing clock was given to the original owner’s of the house as a wedding gift from NAPOLEON!  Napoleon was a good friend of the husband, and he let him choose any item in his house as a gift, and this is what the husband chose.  It’s solid gold—pretty cool.

Maddie was demonstrating her newfound clapping skills:

Olivia got to swing on this little tree swing that hung from one of the 300 year old trees!

It was so fun getting to experience a little piece of the south’s history.  Next time we drive through New Orleans, we will definitely be checking out some of the other plantation homes.  It was such a fun mini trip!