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I'm writing this blog entry from San Marcos, just outside Austin, TX after an awesome night with my cousins and their old school friends on their homecoming reunion weekend :-) but back to New Orleans which seems like an age ago!
Sheena and I had already booked our cooking lesson/food tour in advance so we were relatively organised we just had to book a swamp tour and we'd read about a literary tour that some companies do and with Sheena's love of Tennessee Williams we decided to try and sort out that too, the swamp tour was easy to book but the literary tour was a little trickier, our concierge had to call around and persuade one of the guides to do it on short notice and he obliged :-) so we had our trip planned, gators, books and food :-)
Our first tour was the swamp tour which was so cooool! We went out on an airboat into the bayous and our guide, a young Cajun called beebob, or something similar, took us round and showed us Alligators and turtles but also described their conservation programs and gave a very compelling argument why big gators should be protected from hunters.
He stopped the boat a couple of times and their little heads would rise up and then they made a beeline over for some marshmallows :-)
There was also a baby one the boat called miller light who we all held :-) the weather was crazy that day, my face got burnt on the first half of the boat ride then it rained so hard we couldn't see or hear our guide! My shorts took 2 days to dry! Just before we headed for home Sheena asked how they hold the bigger gators so with that he wrestled one and picked him up! The gator was hissing at him when he put him back in the water and when he threw him a marshmallow for being a good sport he turned his nose up at it and swam away! It was soooo funny :-)
So with the morning swamp tour done we got ready for the afternoon literary tour, we met Dave, born and bred in N'awlins, as they like to say :-) in Faulkner's Bookshop in pirates alley, just off Jackson Square, which is beautiful by the way, and he was the loveliest man, he was 60ish, tall and dressed all in beigey white and he was carrying a little paper bag full of quotes and literary reference points because he hasn't done the tour for such a long time and didn't want to forget anything, Sheena and I both wanted to put him in our pockets and take him home!
He walked us round the quarters for 3 hours, adding an hour on to our agreed time for free, he gave us a history lesson on New Orleans going back to the first settlers up to today whilst managing to tie it all neatly in to the literary tour and theme, I learnt more about the US in those 3 hours than the rest of my trip combined, he sat and quoted from Capote, Williams and Faulkner for 20 minutes in the lobby of the D H Holmes department store then as we walked out to see the statue of the fictional Ignatious Reilly a marching band with upwards of a hundred musicians playing marched past like it was planned :-) and it was just the best afternoon ever :-)
We had cocktails that evening in the Carousel Bar in the Monteleone, a bar designed like a carousel that slowly rotates as you sit on it :-) we ordered a Sazarac, the official drink of NOLA and a Hurricane, another local creation, WELL the sazarac was hell in a glass, the kind of drink that makes you pull a face once you've tried it... The hurricane was tasty though :-) we had dinner in G W Fins, a creole restaurant, we had gumbo to start and I had Mahi and Sheena had another fish that don't recall the name of, whoops! I had a salted malt cheesecake for pudding, yum!
I appear to have rattled oin about this one day for a fair while!
The next day we had the cooking class and food tour, so we got up and headed for the cafe du monde for coffee and beignets :-) after ticking that box we wandered down to St Louis Street for the class, we made gumbo, jambalaya, bread pudding and pralines it was really good fun and I reckon I could make them at home now... Well I'll show simon how anyway :-)
The food tour was disappointing our guide was from Dallas so it was like being shown around by a tourist... We went to some nice restaurants but they were unaccommodating and uninterested unlike in Asheville where you were welcomed in here we put in a side room and made to eat off our laps it was such a shame but hey ho.
That evening we met my gammys cousin Peggy Jo, we crossed over the Mississippi River on the ferry and she picked us up for dinner :-) what a lovely lady! We were welcomed into her home and again it felt like I'd known her for years :-) I fell in love with Precious the Maltese :-)
We had Italian food and talked and talked, she really is an amazing lady :-)
I was sad to say goodbye to Peggy and Tony :-(
The next morning we got up and had breakfast at a little café with amazing beignets :-) and then we caught the streetcar to the greyhound station for the next part of our adventure :-)
And this is where I shall leave it today, love you all x x x
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