We drove down on Friday morning. It is a 6 hour drive from here. Cade did really well in the car. I sat by him for a couple of hours to entertain him and even gave him a taste of cracker. He loved it after the first lick!
The first place we went was the French Quarter. I wanted to try some Beignets and we had heard thae Cafe Du Monde was the place to go. I waited in line and listed to the Jazz muscians play on the street while Kirk gave Cade some yogurt and then we enjoyed our beignets! Should have bought more!
I had picked out a restraunt to eat at, but the line was out the door so we decided to wander.
We walked through the French Market and picked up some lunch there. I had Jambalaya and Kirk had a crawfish boudin (sausage) po-boy. Mine was definitely better!
Cade also needed to eat, but how do you nurse a baby in the busy French Quarter? We didn't want to walk all the way back to the car, so I ended up in the bathroom stall. It worked. We walked along the river bank, through Jackson Square and saw the St. Louis Cathedral.
Most people would spend a lot more time here shopping and eating, but we were done and had a tired baby so we headed out to the hotel.
The next morning, we let Cade take a nap then went to go find some alligators. Our destination: Barataria Preserve. We started out at the visitor center and the guy there told us the best part of the boardwalk to see the alligators. We were a little disappointed at the beginning, only grasshoppers around. Then, we walked out to a lookout and right below us in the water was a little gator! It was about 3 1/2 feet long and swimming through the water. Pretty cool.
As we kept walking we saw 5 more gators. One swam through a pond right up to us--probably looking for a food. He growled and put one foot up on the bank. It made us jump. He was seriously 2 feet from the boardwalk. Luckily it wasn't a huge guy. We also saw several snakes along the walk. It was a very cool place.
We went back to the hotel and Cade napped again. We wanted to go out to dinner at Salvo's Seafood because it was nearby and looked yummy. However, when Cade got up, he was so ready to play and crawl around we decided to call and do a take-out order instead. We got our food--fried catfish and shrimp and french fries and enjoyed it at the hotel.
Sunday morning came after a long night--Cade decided to wake up and not go back to sleep for 2 hours! We packed up and headed out to what we were most excited for, the swamp tour. Cade wrestled the first gator we saw. He won.
On the way we took a detour down St. Charles street. It is full of 100+ year old mansions. I thought they were pretty cool, Kirk wasn't too thrilled. We made it to the swamp tour and boarded our boat. We knew that this would be good because we saw 4 alligators before we even left the dock. The captain threw out marshmallows to the gators that we saw and they ate them up. We got to see 3 racoon and lots of birds too. Kirk got to hold a baby alligator.
The best part was seeing old Snaggletooth. He is a 10 foot 450 pound alligator. The captain stopped the boat and fed him some turkey. He jumped right out of the water and ate it off the stick. Cade did really well for the first part of the tour and then just got too tired and spent the rest of it sleeping
He stayed asleep as we got in the car and drove home.
We had a great trip. I love getting away from home, even though it was only a couple of days. Travelling is different with a baby. We definitely would have been able to do more without him, but we had a great time anyway.
2 comments:
Hey we were at Cafe Du Monde last fall. Very yummy! Looks like you had fun. And I totally know what you mean about traveling being different with kids. I'm not very excited to try it with 2. One was quite a handful! :) Glad you had fun!
Wait, alligators growl? I think they just jumped ahead of badgers on my list of horrible things I do not want to encounter in the wilderness!
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