New Orleans, Breaux Bridge, Orange, Texas

1/18/2012 The Big Easy The weather turned sunny and warm as we rolled in to New Orleans. Our hotel was on Decatur Street right next to Jackson Square and Cafe du Monde.

There is music everywhere and Frenchman Street has displaced Bourbon Street as the place for good music. We did find a good Zydeco band at Turtle Bay on Bourbon Street one night and Brenda launched her career as a washboard player as revealed in the video below. We had breakfast at Cafe du Monde every day and the sugar high lasted well into the afternoon. We also toured the aquarium and took a trolley car ride.

We're putting most of our photos/videos on YouTube now because the quality is better so click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyYvwIgMv2I&feature=youtu.be  to see our video blog of New Orleans.

1/20/2012 Breaux Bridge, Louisiana Breaux Bridge is the Crawfish Capital of the World where you can hear great Cajun/Zydeco music and meet some really friendly people (and of course eat crawfish – see video below). We went to Cafe des Amis for the Saturday Zydeco Breakfast – Crawfish etouffee omelets, Tabasco Boody Mary's and dance lessons (big shout out to Karen and Nicko). My high school friend, Ken, and his lovely wife Linda met us there.

Our last day in Breaux Bridge we went to Whiskey River Landing to hear Geno Delafose at the Sunday afternoon dance. Our GPS got us on a road with a river on our right and a 40 foot levee on our left. After driving a while she (GPS) said “Arriving at destination”. We looked around but there was nothing there. We made a U turn and noticed a narrow, steep shale road heading up the levee. We went up it and at the top could see Whiskey River Landing perched way down on the edge of the swamp – neat setting.

On our way to Orange we stopped at the Tabasco Plant at Avery Island. When we got out of the car you could actually smell Tabasco Sauce. They produce 770,000 bottles of Tabasco Sauce a day there. The gift shop had samples of some new products including Tabasco ice cream and Tabasco cola.

Click this link  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NnrZAWXXSw&feature=youtu.be  to see our video blog of Breaux Bridge/Avery Island.

1/24/2012 Orange, Texas I grew up in Orange, Texas (Okay - some may dispute the idea that I actually grew up but that's a separate issue.) Thanks to Sandye and Van for setting up lunch where we could see who could come up with the most episodes of “Do you remember when......” It was fun to reminisce with Scott, Van, Ken, Katy, Cassandra, Judy and Sandye.