Our hotel was in the heart of the French Quarter and just three blocks down from Bourbon street. Have you every visited Bourbon street? What an experience. Here's a picture of the street during the afternoon; not the best picture and comes no where close to portraying the essence of this street.
Bourbon street is a street filled with historical buildings, smells, music, bars, smells, pictures-not-appropriate-for-viewing-by-children, live bands, smells, live-dancing-not-appropriate-for-viewing-by-children-and-adults, and more smells. I think that about covers the description for this street. Oh, and that's during the day. It all gets much, much more... ummmm.... interesting after dark.
We also had the chance to ride a street car to the Garden District, which is an area filled with gorgeous, some historical, some not historical, homes. We enjoyed an hour or so walking around this area. Our visit in New Orleans was just a few weeks after Mardi Gras and there were signs of this event all over. Many homes were still decorated with colorful decorations in celebration and beads were hanging from trees. Can you see the beads in this picture?
We then got half a day to take a tour to visit the Oak Alley Plantation - a beautiful plantation that had been built in the early 1700s. The two rows of oak trees leading from the Mississippi river were actually planted before the beautiful mansion was built by a settler who did not survive long in Louisiana. The home was built almost 50 years after the trees were planted.
The tour of the plantation and walking through the alley of gorgeous old oak trees was really a great experience. These are just two samples of our visit, I have many more pictures to share in my next posting.
Can you tell by this dorky photo that the weather was perfect and we thoroughly enjoyed our experience? Well, we did. I'll share more next week.
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