BREAUX BRIDGE... AND NEW IBERIA

Breaux Bridge is a tiny town an hour away from New Orleans surrounded by lush swamp lands, it also happens to be the heart of Cajun country and the official Crawfish capitol (did I mention Gator boys TV show is filmed there?).  To get there by car coming from Mississippi you need to drive for about an hour on a floating bridge, it was so stunning to drive through the bayou on this almost undulating highway, that was built by the mafias construction company... heres hoping all the bodies don't degrade the concrete!

We stayed in a our first hotel of the trip here and it was a pleasant surprise, upon arrival we were informed that the gumbo would be ready shortly for supper and then sent upstairs to a nice clean room with an air-conditioning unit that puts leaf blowers to shame.

We went out for dinner that night to Cafe De Amis, a cajun restaurant that had live Cajun/zydeco music. We got the last seats in the place for the whole night, we were lucky enough that another couple were happy to share their table with us. They were retired school teachers from Vegas and great for a chat. He looked so much like Hugh Hefner did about 15 years ago that I couldn't stop staring, he also had a cool Hawaiian shirt. The music that night was amazing and I could see all our parents loving it, its a jazzed up french country folk style that had the locals dancing in between and around all the tables as the night wore on. Another amazing thing about the south is that they do seafood cheap! I ate my fill of crawfish, alligator, catfish and shrimp for almost every meal... it also might be worth noting that at this point in the trip I couldn't remember the last time I managed to find a vegetable without mayonnaise on it. Hello cellulite!

The next morning we ventured out in the fog on our swamp tour. I can easily say that was a highlight for both of us, the gators and birds were amazing but just seeing the bayou and history of it was incredible. I have a lot of respect for the determination it took from the Acadians to survive out there. So after 2 hours of trawling the swamp (which we went on with our new dinner friends from the night before) we went and got some boudain, which is sausage casing filled with a smokey, spicy rice and either pork, chicken of seafood mix which is then steamed. It's so amazing (and cheap) that we've already made some since getting home.

It was such a great little town full of truly friendly people that speak with cajun accents and they actually seemed to want to stop and chat... except at walmart but I think everyone hates life if they work at walmart. So Breaux Bridge is one of the best places in America on my list so far.

Then we drove to New Iberia, it was not a cute little town as we expected. It was a little town full of citied up rednecks with a feeling of rage that seemed to sit festering just below the surface, just waiting to jump out and stab you with a pencil. We had a night booked just outside of town at the rip van winkle cottages which is an old estate with stunning gardens that host a lot of weddings and the B&B which is the old slave quarters.
After we arrived we grabbed a tour around the old house, the tour guide was a little bit of a moron but pleasant enough. Some of my favourite statements from her included "Victorian style house simply means the bedroom is at the front" "what's a chamberpot"  and my favourite "the lady of the house was real high maintenance, she liked to drink tea". We also wandered around the grounds before heading into town for dinner. I got crawfish poboy, I love poboys!
So we returned to our slave quarters and had the creepiest stay every. Also they seemed to have about 300 different porn channels on offer which was a little weird for a historic B&B. In the morning we got asked if we saw the ghosts... umm no? So of course I looked it up and it's a poltergeist hot spot... whoops. So needless to say we were happy to leave that behind.

Off to the tabasco factory tour!