NEW ORLEANS, first new new place!!

When I arrived in New Orleans, it was already dark.  I thought that I would try to find a cheap hotel in the spare hour I had before Cynthia’s plane got in.  I found this hotel that looked cheap, however, it also looked like it had been in a murder movie.  I went to a starbucks instead and got online to wait.  She got in right on time.  We were going to find a hotel close to the airport because it would be cheaper and we were going to head into town in the morning.  We stopped at the first hotel that didn’t look bad, went in and asked the rate.  It was $84, so we said, “we need a room for under $60, I know there’s a motel 6 around here,” and the lady was like I can do it for $60.  Sweet!.. and we headed to the room.  We went to the only place around, Denny’s, for a bite, a drink and chit-chat.

In the morning, we headed to the French Quarter to Café du Monde to get coffee and beignets (ben-yays).  We parked on the mississippi river and stuck our feet in first.

 

 Mississippi River

Eating Beignets

Then we walked around the French Quarter for the rest of the morning taking pictures.

Outside of the  St. Louis Cathedral

 

Inside of the Cathedral

Then we decided to get in the car, drive around and look a the beautiful houses. 

 

A beautiful house on St. Charles Street

We were going to go on a swamp tour but the river wasn't cooperating and it was storming.  We decided to go on a plantation tour of Oak Alley Plantation but not before we had lunch.

This is the Hurricane rain coming down while we were eating lunch.

After lunch, we headed out to the plantation.  It was an hour drive but the weather was beautiful out there.

Oak Alley Plantation 

 

  Mississippi River near the plantations

 

One of the awesome flower photos I took at the this day

This is "The Joint," the place we ate really good southern pulled pork sandwiches, mac n cheese and awesome potato salad kinda like mom's recipe.

When we were out at the plantations, there were so many sugar cane stalks! I decided I had to get one.  We pulled over and I ripped one off.  The picture below is me with the sugar cane, getting rid of it because we couldn't have it in the car anymore... too big!

After dinner, we headed to Biloxi, Mississippi to stay the night.  We thought that we would get a couple hours of our long drive to Savannah out of the way.  We found a casino that had rooms for 60 bucks but we thought we would just arrive late and try to get a better deal.  Gambling at night, view of the ocean from the room and stick our feet in it tomorrow; what a great planned night.... that didn't go as planned.  The casino rooms were full and expensive because of a car show going on in town.  Biloxi is a southern style Vegas thats smaller and includes beaches and old guys that have the money to own old cars.  So.. we stayed at a 76 dollar Econolodge that had an earwig in it, but we slept well.

Next stop... beaches and DRIVING.