A 2-week Deep South Road Trip - Part 2
- Lucy and the lens
- Sep 9, 2018
- 3 min read
This is the second part of my blog about our Deep South Road Trip in April 2017. For Part 1 click here. The days in bold below are the ones I'll talk about in this post.
Day 1 and 2: Nashville, Tennessee
Day 3 and 4: Memphis, Tennessee
Day 5: Tupelo, then drive the Natchez Trace Parkway to Natchez
Day 6: Natchez, Mississippi
Day 7, 8 and 9: New Orleans, Louisiana
Day 10: Monroeville, Alabama and Senoia, Georgia
Day 11 and 12: Savannah, Georgia
Day 13 and 14: Charleston, South Carolina
Day 15 and 16: Washington DC
Day 7, 8, and 9 - New Orleans, Louisiana
On our drive from Natchez to New Orleans, we suddenly decided that we wanted to try po' boys for the first time, so we Googled something along the lines of 'best po' boys near me' and ended up in a town called St Francisville at the Magnolia Cafe. This place looks unassuming but their po' boys lived up to all expectations! For those who have yet to try one, a po' boy is the messiest sandwich you will ever eat, stuffed with roast beef and dripping with gravy. It's a signature dish in Louisiana.
We arrived in New Orleans and headed straight out on a tour of the city's very distinctive-looking buildings. We started with the colourful shotgun houses in the French Quarter, long but very narrow clapboard houses where the rooms are placed on behind the other, rather than side by side. One theory is that the name comes from the fact that you could shoot a bullet in through the front door and it would go straight out the backdoor at the other end - but this isn't confirmed!
We then explored the antebellum houses of the rich and famous in the Garden District - one I remember in particular belonged to Anne Rice of 'Interview with a Vampire' fame...I remember this one because I tried to stroke a cat that emerged from her garden and it BIT me. I was worried I'd become a vampire cat for a few hours after that!
Then we took it up yet another level - visiting the grand plantation homes of the slavery era. My favourite was Oak Alley Plantation, where an immersive tour described what life was like for both the owners and their slaves during its heyday. Its big draw is the grand driveway flanked by ancient oaks on either side.
Speaking of oaks, another interesting sight in town is the Tree of Life, a 400 year-old Spanish moss-draped oak tree located in Audubon Park. I was more than a little obsessed with the Spanish moss that hung from most of the trees in the southern states.
Another must-do when in New Orleans is a bayou boat tour where you're more-or-less guaranteed more than a few alligator sightings. There are about a hundred different swamp tour companies out there, so I spent days looking for one that was both ethical and value for money - I eventually found Dr Wagner's Swamp Tours, which offered everything we wanted for a fair price! We got to see so many gators on our trip, and the Honey Island swamp is less busy with tour boats that other areas of the bayou.
Then it was time to eat! Trying beignets was a given, and the famous ones at Cafe du Monde were surpassed only by the praline sauce-filled ones at Loretta's Pralines. I've described our beignet experiences in more detail in my 'Travel to Eat' post here.
In the evening, we took part in a ghost tour of the French Quarter with Ghost City Tours that took us to some of the most infamous spots in the city, including the LaLaurie house. There are a lot of legends about what brutal acts Madame LaLaurie carried out against her slaves, but this tour aimed to set the record straight. The LaLaurie house is privately owned by someone who clearly doesn't believe the ghost stories, so this ghost tour is the closest you'll get to learning what it's like inside.
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