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Mississippi River - Winding our way from New Orleans to White Castle
I could happily have spent more time in New Orleans – always good to leave a place wanting more though. I would visit again in a heartbeat! Laisser les bons temps roulez – let the good times continue to roll though… We moved on today to White Castle, driving the river road up the great Mississippi River to White Castle.
This is sugar plantation country. It was fun to pass road signs to all the places you hear about in the songs you love – Baton Rouge, Lake Ponchartrain, Lake Charles, Jackson, Greenville.
The country is flat – it is swamp land. Swamp tours don’t get great reviews though – many are not nearly eco friendly enough for me and I wasn’t desperate enough to see an alligator to risk the mosquitos anyway. So we opted for a bit of downtime and the Nottoway Plantation is a great place to do that.
Lowlights
There are some really bad swamp tours operating in this area. In some cases, they bait the alligators with marshmallows, which look their eggs, to allow the tourists to take their photos. Yes – really! There are also tours to hunt alligators advertised in the cafés. Uggh!.
Foodie Firsts
Poboy – short for poorboy and basically a sandwich/sub. Originally, they had oysters inside (the cheapest food in the 30’s Depression) – now they can have anything from chicken to fish to a whole omelette inside.
Tips for Future Travellers
We picked up the hire car from New Orleans airport. The Alamo car rental office there wouldn’t let us hire the car as the holiday had been booked in my name, but I wasn’t doing the driving so hadn’t brought my driving licence with me. It got sorted – eventually – but wasted an hour of stress we could have done without.
