from the plantation to city park

We got up nice and early this morning, braved the crowds at the hotel for breakfast (hey, free breakfast is no joke!) and then set out for Oak Alley Plantation. We got there right when it opened, and we managed to pretty much stay one step ahead of the crowds all morning, which was perfect. I made the boys pose for pictures, and even managed to get one of my parents, but then my folks decided to go ahead and do the tour ahead of us. Once we all finished learning about life from the perspective of both slaves and owners (though not enough from the slave perspective, in my opinion, because it's important to really acknowledge our shameful national history), we met up again and walked around the grounds, then we had lunch at the plantation restaurant.

 

Listen, friends, I'm not really one to take a lot of pictures of my food, but this was an AMAZING meal. Fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade, crawfish stuffed mushrooms, crawfish etouffee, bananas foster waffles, white chocolate creme brûlée, praline cheesecake. (Not all mine, we all tried bites from each other.) It was so good.

We headed back to the hotel for an afternoon siesta, then headed to City Park for the annual Celebration in the Oaks, where they do all sorts of holiday lights and it's a big festival. The lights were impressive, but the crowds really sucked. It was too loud and hard to navigate, especially for my mom, who has a bum knee. We had tickets for a train ride to see all the lights, but the train wasn't running, so we stopped in a cafe. My parents went in first and sat at an empty table that had a bucket of popcorn on it, then the boys joined them and figured the popcorn was free so they started munching on it. Then a guy came from out of nowhere and started yelling at everyone for eating his popcorn. It was all deeply weird and upsetting, so we decided to get out of there. Strike one for NOLA, I guess. Luckily for us, the server at Oak Alley gave us a hot tip about a better city lights display in a park in the suburbs that you drive through, so maybe we'll check that out tomorrow.