By Shelby
Monday, we got up and made the jambalaya we had intended on making Sunday night. Just as we had started cooking the sausage, the power at the airbnb went out. We tried to wait out the power outage, so we could finish cooking but it was getting late. Just as we finished putting everything away at almost 11PM, the power came back on. We decided to just finish it in the morning. It did turn out very good. I really liked it.
After having cereal for breakfast and packing up the car, we left the airbnb and went to a nearby library. Since we had gotten a late start, we decided not to drive to New Orleans until Tuesday. Instead, we worked on wedding and trip planning at the library.
Tuesday, we did drive into New Orleans. After finding a parking garage, we started our walk to the French Quarter, a historic district in the heart of the city. There were colorful buildings with cast iron balconies.
Our first stop in the French Quarter was to get beignet, a famous New Orleans French donut. We went to Cafe Beignet and waited in a very long line. The beignet were very good. They reminded me of fried dough. The cafe was very busy, so we got them to go and ate them outside.
We continued down Royal Street, a well known street in the French Quarter with lots of shops and cafés. On many of the street corners, there were jazz and blues bands playing music.
Our next stop was Jackson Square where we saw the St. Louis Cathedral. There were street performers, small brass bands, and psychics all around the park in Jackson Square. The bands were very loud and lively.
We continued on to the French Market, which was a covered building of small shops selling food, souvenirs, and other small things. We didn’t see anything we wanted to buy, so we didn’t stay too long.
Next, we walked to Bourbon Street, a famous street known for its bars, live music, and more. Most of the things to do on Bourbon Street required spending money. Eventually, we decided to go into a small bar with a live jazz band. We got a couple drinks and listened to the band play for a while.
We caught the historic St. Charles streetcar and rode to Magazine Street. Magazine Street is also a well known street. There were lots of cafés, restaurants, and small shops. There were also a bunch of nice houses.
We went to a restaurant called Mahoney’s for a late lunch. We tried the crawfish nachos, which were a little over seasoned. I got a cup of gumbo and Spencer got a po’boy. A po’boy is a sandwich from Louisiana with some kind of meat or fried seafood dressed with lettuce, tomato, and mayo, and is served on French bread. After lunch, we finished our walk on Magazine Street and caught the streetcar back to the parking garage. Then we drove across the Mississippi to Planet Fitness for the night.
Wednesday morning, we drove to New Orleans’s second oldest neighborhood, Algiers Point. We walked up the levee to see the New Orleans skyline. It was interesting to see how the city was protected from flooding.
Next, we drove out of the city and went to Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Nature Preserve. We walked a short boardwalk trail from the visitors center into the wetland. We saw two alligators right next to the boardwalk. They were so still they looked fake.
We drove a short way down the road from the visitors center to another trail through the wetlands. We were hoping to see an armadillo, but unfortunately we did not. After we finished with the trail, we drove back to the visitors center to hang out for a couple hours. Then we drove two hours to New Iberia, a small city in the center of southern Louisiana.
Friday morning, we drove to Avery Island to the Tabasco Factory and museum. There, we got to see how Tabasco hot sauce is made. Some of the peppers are grown on the island, but most of them are grown all over the world. The peppers are mashed and sent to the factory at Avery Island to age for at least three years in oak barrels. Then the mash is mixed with vinegar for 28 days before being strained and bottled. The mixing building smelled very strongly of hot sauce.
We also got to see the barrel warehouse. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of barrels of pepper mash aging. There was also a small greenhouse with Tabasco peppers, habanero peppers, and jalapeño peppers. Near the greenhouse, there was a bamboo grove with a short trail in it. It reminded me of Japan.
Our last stop of the Tabasco Factory tour was the gift shop where we got to taste all the hot sauces Tabasco makes. There were quite a few. We even tried their Scorpion sauce, the hottest sauce they make. We also tried honey from the island, Tabasco bbq sauces, pepper jellies, and chili made with Tabasco hot sauce.
Included with our factory tour tickets was admission to the Jungle Gardens on Avery Island. You could either drive or walk through the garden. We decided to walk the 3.5 miles, which ended up being a good idea. There were so many things we saw that we would have missed if we drove.
There were multiple ponds and swampy areas where we saw lots of alligators. We got pretty close to one and it stood up and started walking. That was cool to see. All of the other ones we saw just sat there completely still.
The rest of the gardens were very nice. The large oak trees had moss hanging from the branches. There was a Japanese style garden with a stone bridge and Buddha statue. The camellia bushes weren’t in bloom, but I’m sure they would have been beautiful.
After our walk through the gardens, we had a quick lunch in the car before driving an hour and a half to Lake Charles, another small city near the Texas border. For dinner, we went to a Chinese buffet. We got to try whole boiled crawfish, which was interesting. I thought it tasted good, but I had a hard time getting the meat out.
That night we stayed at the Planet Fitness in Lake Charles. A crazy storm blew through in the middle of the night and woke us up. There was a ton of lightning and the rain flooded the parking lot.
Friday morning, we got a late start. We wanted to have an early lunch at Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen in Louisiana. We both tried the classic chicken sandwich, Cajun fries, and chocolate-filled beignets. It was all very good.
After we finished eating, we drove on to the Texas welcome center right across the border from Louisiana. We got a picture with the giant star and statue of Texas. The welcome center also had a nice boardwalk that went into a swamp.
Our next stop was Houston. My first impression of the city was just how many cars there were. It seemed really busy. The highways were massive, all the parking lots seemed full, and we even saw gas stations with at least 30 pumps. There were also multiple huge oil refineries. I wasn’t sure if it was this busy because of the holidays or if it was always this busy. The saying “everything is bigger in Texas” certainly fits Houston.
We had just one stop in Houston – Buffalo Bayou Park. We luckily got the last free parking spot in the lot. We went for a two mile walk through the park. The reason we went there was to get a view of the Houston skyline and the park definitely delivered.
After finishing our walk in the park, we drove west out of Houston. Our next stop was a scenic overlook in Palmetto State Park to catch the sunset. It was beautiful. The landscape was much different from the wetlands of Louisiana. The dirt was a bright red, which I associate with the southwest US. I’m looking forward to the desert-y landscape of the west. There were herds of cows in the distance we could hear mooing. After the sunset, we moved on to a rest area about a half hour outside of San Antonio to eat dinner. Then we drove on to one of the Planet Fitnesses in the city.
Saturday was quite the day. We started with visiting San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. The park was actually four different preserved missions – Mission Espada, Mission San Juan, Mission San Jose, and Mission Concepcion. The missions were established in the late 1600s to mid 1700s by Spain in order to spread Christianity to the indigenous peoples. Most of the churches in the missions are still in use today.
My favorite mission was Mission San Jose. Mission San Jose was established in 1716. It was very well preserved and pretty elaborate. The hallway arches were beautiful. Outside the mission, we even saw our first saguaro cactus. The missions are managed by the national park service and we did a ton of reading at their museums and exhibits in and around the missions.
After we finished visiting the missions, we drove downtown and walked over to the Riverwalk. I was very impressed by it. Everything was very clean and well tended to. There were boats with lights on the bottom that carried tourists down the narrow river. The bridges were very scenic, along with the stairs leading up to the roads. There were countless restaurants and small shops lining the river.
We walked along the river until we reached the Alamo. We had reserved free tickets to go inside. The Alamo is where the famous battle occurred during the Texas Revolution where Mexican forces succeeded in capturing the fort and killed nearly all the defenders. The building itself was beautiful and there were massive efforts to keep it preserved. Once again we did a ton of reading and at the end we felt a little burnt out from all the history.
We had dinner at Casa Rio, a Tex-Mex restaurant on the Riverwalk that claimed to be the first restaurant to open its doors to the river. It opened in 1946. We got plates that included chips and salsa, guacamole salad, chili con carne, tamales, a taco, refried beans, Mexican rice, and a cheese enchilada. We also got horchata, a Mexican sweet drink made from rice soaked in water and flavored with cinnamon. It was sweetened with sugar. It was very good. We had some leftovers, so we walked back to the car after we finished eating.
We hung out at the car for a few minutes before walking back down to the Riverwalk to check out the New Year’s Eve festivities. It was dark out now, so we could see all the multicolored lights hanging from all the trees along the river. It was really nice. We made our way to the famous Tower of the Americas. It reminded me of the tower in Toronto, Canada.
There were so many people out celebrating. There were multiple stages with live music, many food vendors, and margarita trucks. I got a strawberry margarita. It was interesting that it’s legal to carry around open alcohol there. We eventually headed to the stage by the river and watched the show. There was a group of dancers that were really good. They did all sorts of dances, like the samba, some kind of line dancing, merengue, and more.
When we finished watching the dancers, we went back to the car to wait for the fireworks at midnight. We had parked on the roof of a parking garage and we were hoping we would have a good view of the fireworks away from the crowds. On the way back, we stopped at Justin’s Ice Cream, so Spencer could get a cup of ice cream. At 11PM, we watched the ball drop in NY. It looked cold and rainy. I think San Antonio is the place to be for New Year’s. It was warm out and felt more like the Fourth of July.
The fireworks started going off around midnight. It was crazy. I had never seen so many fireworks in my life. There were the city fireworks going off near the Tower, but there were even more going off all over the city. There was literally a wall of fireworks going off in the distance. They kept going on for at least 20 minutes. The whole city was really hazy and smoky when the fireworks finally slowed down. What a great way to bring in the new year! Next week, we’re moving on from San Antonio to head toward Big Bend National Park.
Fun Facts from Week 36:
- The San Antonio Missions is the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Texas.
- It is a common belief that chili was invented near San Antonio, Texas.
- Every night around sunset, thousands of bats emerge from the Waugh Drive Bridge in Houston.
- The St. Charles Streetcar line in New Orleans has been running since 1835. It is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world.
2 responses to “Week 36”
Finally got to see your alligators! I ask myself WHY did you want to get near them..lol
lol we saw alligators in Florida too! They didn’t seem to be bothered by us at all!