Day 209 to 210 - Supermarket overload

New Orleans

Day 209

We signed up for a walking tour of the French Quarter so we could get some appreciation of New Orleans' history. The tour guide was very theatrical as he walked us through the turbulent history of the French, Spanish, English and American occupation of NOLA.

In the afternoon we took the trolley car (or tram as we would call it at home) to the Garden District and took ourselves on a self-guided walking tour of the grand houses of the area. They are massive and beautiful but difficult to admire when you realize that the wealth that built them was all made on the backs of slaves doing all the hard work while the owners reaped the financial rewards. The last house we visited was used in the Benjamin Button film and apparently Brad Pitt ended up buying a home in the area afterwards. It's easy to see why anyone would want to live in the area as it is so stunning but having hordes of tourists walking the streets everyday of the year gawking at your house would surely put a dampener on it.

We spent the evening with the throngs of tourists doing the Bourbon St walk. We stopped off at a few places and enjoyed the music, at one point we transferred our drinks into plastic cups so we could stroll down the street (no glass allowed). Along the street there are second floor verandas where people stand and throw plastic beaded necklaces to the people below, especially to women when they flash their chests.



Day 210

This morning we drive out to visit one of the grand old sugar plantation houses along the Mississippi River, about an hour from town. We chose the Laura plantation as it seems to be one of the more popular ones, when we arrived we were ushered straight onto a tour with a large group. The tour took us through the main house and told the story of the families that lived there, it lasted about an hour and seemed a bit superficial with regard to the historical side of things, the sugar tour we did in Cuba was more informative.

The Laura plantation main house

The entire area along the river was originally all sugar plantations, and we could see many of the old plantation houses as we followed the river road. We visited the Oak Valley plantation for lunch as recommended by the guide at Laura (though K had trouble with the thick American accent here in the Deep South and thought we were headed to "O'Gally"). Oak Valley was much larger than Laura and was self guided, with plenty of information available on the slaves and their lives.

Slave quarters

We headed back to NOLA and stopped at a supermarket, where we suffered from further culture shock. We have spent so long trying to scrape together appetising meals in supermarkets with little range that we have been blown away by what we've seen here in the US. The supermarkets are crammed with so much produce and freshly cooked, ready made options that we have been wandering around struggling with the choices, almost leaving empty handed because we couldn't make a decision on what to eat!