Day: December 16, 2009

After Mississippi, we drove to New Orleans. Our first impression was that downtown looked like Vancouver. Then we saw the French quarter and thought it looked like Montreal, but not quite as nice. We haven’t even been down by the water (the Mississippi River) yet, so we’ll reserve judgment until then.

We did a detour on the way to our hotel. The GPS brought us to the other branch of our hotel – the one by the airport. We got way out there and then realized that we were nowhere near the French Quarter! Then we heard the really loud planes over our heads and hoped that we hadn’t booked there by mistake. Luckily, it was only a matter of setting the GPS to bring us to our real hotel.

Our hotel is very comfortable and is walking distance from the French Quarter. Names here are French, but nobody speaks it anymore, it seems. We all went for lunch at Mother’s, a famous spot. We had Jambalaya and a Po’ Boy. Finally figured out what a Po’ Boy is. It is made of what they call debris – the pieces of meat that fall into the gravy. Restaurant owners used to sell pieces of French bread topped with gravy and debris to poor boys at the back door. Poor Boy = Po’ Boy. Jambalaya is with rice and sausages and chicken. Tomorrow we’ll try the gumbo. And bread pudding seems to be big here, too.

Morgane and I spent the afternoon at the Children’s Museum. She LOVED it, but I think I’ve had my fill of these places for now.They did have a great section of Mr. Rogers and you could play the songs and go in his house and put on his sweater. It brought back some nice memories. Maybe I’ll look up some clips on youtube to show Morgane.

(Note: I have added some things to the previous two posts!)

I can hardly remember all the places we’ve driven through lately. After we left Homosassa, we were driving along when Ghis spotted something on the road. I think he shouted, “Opossom!” He braked and I stared at the creature. Then I yelled, “Armadillo!” It was an armadillo. Ghis managed to stop and we watched her walk off the road and into the bushes. We didn’t even know there were armadillos around.

We spent the next night in Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, and then drove to Fort Walton Beach on the Emerald Coast.

We visited a science center and bought a membership which can be used at 300 other science centres and museums in the States and in Canada, too.

We stopped at the beach to see the green water and white sands. It was raining a bit, but it turned out to be a great shell beach. Morgane even found two giant sand dollars. The swimming must be great here when the weather is warmer.

Then we drove into Alabama, continuing along the Gulf of Mexico coast. We camped in a state park that was only $16. I was afraid of the bayou that our campsite was next to since it was dark and I’d heard about crocodiles liking areas like this.

I read on a blog some wisdom in case I do run into a croc. They said to zig zag instead of running straight away because crocodiles can’t zig zag very easily. I don’t really think crocodiles are hanging around waiting to prey on people, but when I get to a campsite at night, I don’t take any chances!

We were up early, especially after changing time zones gave us an extra hour. We continued on to Mississippi. We drove along the coast and saw a lot of ruins. There are huge casinos everywhere, but these brand-new buildings stick up here and there. There is a lot of land with nothing on it and it’s easy to spot a lot of foundations that must be from buildings ruined in the hurricane. There is also a ton of land for sale. I guess not everybody wants to rebuild.