New Orleans...first encounter with the French Quarter!

---

Here we are, finally in New Orleans. I know, you haven't visit the world if you have not come to New Orleans. The Hurricane season is already on from 1st of august. So the big question was, are we going to be dry, wet, or completely underwater for our two nights here.



Well, we were on the lucky side, you've read what has happened with Harvey the last few days. Not sure how wet New Orleans did end up, but in the news while visiting the city, the first thing was how many of the turbines to pump the water out in case of hurricane, was simply not in working condition!



We stay mainly on the Interstate from Dallas to New Orleans, going via Lafayette at the end to have some more entertainment while driving. We saw a lot of trees on the way, a lot of them. By the end, we did get close to the Bayou. Before visiting new Orleans, the plan was to take a little side trip to visit a Bayou. These are the swamps that you will find all the way along the coast from of Texas and mainly Louisiana. Those trips are not specially cheap, so i did a little homework and we settled for Jean Lafitte tour with a nice coupon discount.



The ride was a cool 90 minutes. We saw many alligators, lots of vegetation and water, few birds...and I guess missed one or two snakes. Point to note, as with sharks, there are a lot of stories....alligators are not aggressive, the dangerous ones are actually the crocodiles that you find in the seas, not those little guys! They will go out you if you bother them or they think you are food....but that's it! Was interesting to have this discussion with our guide...after all, sharks world is not that far away!



The visit was truly interesting, and no mosquitoes, even with a 4pm tour! Once the bayou experience done, we were just a good 40 minutes to downtown New Orleans and our crashing pad for the next two nights. The scary part of New Orleans is the price of parking your car for two days...more homework to get a decent deal, and the hope that our rental car would still be there two mornings later! Happily for us, everything went well on that side.



We spent some really relax time in New Orleans. Morning was all about visiting the Garden District including the Lafayette Cemetery. Houses are simply amazing around here...would be ready to move tomorrow, if it was not for all those hurricanes on the way!



Later this afternoon, we spent a lot of time walking the French District from one side to the other. This is one of the to do list in the States. It is obviously a first for Tanya, but it was high on my wish list for a while. I never found the right way to include the Louisiana state into my flying schedule. So this time we did it, arrived by road, left by road!



Obviously, we went out that night. There is a lot of alcohol going around here at night...and young brats with way too much alcohol in their blood is not really our style at our age. So we found a nice quiet wine bar right in the middle of the French Quarter. Nice evening, and yes, we were in bed before midnight, because next morning was another drive, this time to the North!



Enjoy the pictures, as I'm writing this, we are leaving the States tomorrow, and I'm so late on so many blogs...

---