Antique Shopping Galore

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This entry wouldn't be considered a one month trip nor would it be considered a weekend trip, however it would be considered a day trip. A day trip may not seem like it is worth mentioning but I had so much fun that I think this case is special enough to do just that.


The day started out with my Mom and I heading out in the morning to Ponchatoula, Louisiana, which isn't a very long drive from where we live. First thing was first, we stopped by Berry Town Produce. It's a family owned produce market/stand with amazing prices on a lot of their fresh fruits and vegetables. We got a lot of vegetables and some fruits, but not as much as we would have liked to get because of the season we are in at the moment. After we finished at Berry Town Produce we packed up the vehicle with our market finds and headed down the street, finding a parking spot to park in for the morning/afternoon.


Once parked I made a quick stop a foot or two away from where we parked to visit my buddy. My buddy being an alligator in a very large caged in habitat setup, or at least I suppose that's what you could call it anyway. I've been visiting that same alligator for years, making at least one stop to visit almost every time I'm visiting this certain place, or at least I hope it's the same alligator (laughs)! After visiting with my buddy for a quick few seconds my Mom and I started making our way around the area, visiting antique shop after antique shop. The majority of the antique shops are extremely over priced but fun to go into and just look around. Every once in a blue moon you will get lucky and come across a fairly inexpensive treasure so to speak. We walked up and down the the strips, visiting a lot of the antique shops, however we did come across one shop that I really liked in particular. It was a shop focusing around the craft of bead/jewelry making, but they carried a lot of native american jewelry, miscellaneous things to make jewelry with, and different paintings, pictures and a few random items. The name of the shop was 'Turquoise Coyote'. Some of their items were expensive but a lot of them weren't expensive as well.


One of the last shops that we visited was Ponchatoula Feed & Seed. We mostly looked around briefly to a degree until I came across baby chicks and a baby duck or two. I almost got a couple until I realized how much room their built residence would take up. I've had chickens and roosters once before and even though it was fun to raise them they can be quite a hand full. For now raising chickens again or even ducks is out of the question.


We finally visited the last antique shop in the center of the area that we were wandering around in. After that we started deciding on where to eat, and since we weren't too sure of where to go since we have never eaten at any of the cafes, etc. there we started looking around at the different ones. A group of women, all different ages I think, stopped us and asked us where the best place was to eat. It ended up being all of us looking at a directory of the area on a sheet of paper that I had, searching for a place to eat. They ended up walking across the street to this place called Paul's Cafe. It seems a lot of people didn't stop there before because it was filled with mostly nothing but men earlier on during the morning hours. However, after a little thought my Mom and I ended up heading over to Paul's Cafe as well. We were seated fairly quickly even though they were quite busy at the time, not sure if it was the lunch rush or not. The menu consisted of burgers, poboys, hot plates, gumbo, etouffee and so on. The majority of the food was fairly inexpensive and we had extremely great service. The owner as well as one or two other people stopped by the table to make sure everything was good and created slight chit chat with us as well. The people there are quite friendly to say the least and the food we had was excellent!


After we went up to the counter to pay for our meal we left the cafe and walked across the street, straight to our vehicle. We thought about doing some more walking and checking out more antique shops but decided against it since it was fairly hot outside and we were getting a little tired. Before leaving I made a stop by my buddy, the alligator, for another quick look.


Unfortunately I didn't have any film so I couldn't take any pictures. Next time I head out there for some more antique browsing I'll take some pictures and upload them either to this entry or create a new entry and upload them there.

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