Day 3 - Visit to New Orleans

Today (well technically yesterday, but I'm acting as if I wrote this yesterday) we had a full day in New Orleans! On the way there we traveled by highway which is all on top of a swamp so it's mostly all on these big concrete columns all the way into New Orleans...I was wondering if I'd see Alligators or perhaps a Croc...but I didn't.

When we first got into town, we got a little lost and ended up in what we think was part of the 9th ward because the houses had these big X s on them with numbers. We later found out that the numbers were codes for who inspected the house, the number of people they found in the house and the number of pets. It was really interesting and sad.

Next we found the French Quarters!! The culture here in Louisiana is so cool, I feel like Arizona doesn't have any culture compared to this place. The buildings were really neat, they all had these great big swirly iron railings and they were all really cool colors too! We walked around Jackson square (seen here behind us, and you can see the big cathedral behind as well) and we looked at all the artists' work which was filled with all kinds of art, mainly focused around either Katrina or the jazz influence here. We also walked on Bourbon street which was filled with voodoo bars...sort of creepy!

Next we walked down the French open air market which was awesome! They had all sorts of vendors selling everything and anything...jewelry, mardi gras beads, alligator heads, you name they had it!! (I was tempted to get an Alligator head, but I thought that probably didn't quite go with the decor of my house back at home) After that we headed down to the River Walk to experience the great Mississippi River! We found a Brookstone and decided to take advantage of free back massages and foot massages with their great products...such a treasure! Last but not least we went to Cafe Dumont and got some Biegnets!! These things are famous around here...basically they're like French doughnuts and they were delicious!!!

Once we got back to Lafayette the girls took me to experience Cajun dancing...I relate it to line dancing in Arizona. Apparently everybody's parents know how to do it and it's very popular to have cajun dancing at weddings...maybe I can bring the cajun dancing back to Arizona?! It looks fun!