Welcome to New Orleans (or as they say here, N’Yorlens).
Yesterday I was telling you about how The Don (that’s The Don I) was taken back and exchanged for The Don II. When we took him back to the rental company, the attendant moved him over to another location to make it easier for us to move our luggage, while we went and did the paperwork.
When we went to do the changeover, he had written on the back driver’s side window “Rattle under dashboard” which accurately reflected my complaint.
Underneath that was written “CHECK BRAKES!!!”. I wasn’t specifically aware of an issue with the brakes, but experience tells me that if you spend your day doing 80mph on the interstate, you are likely to need brakes at some point – and potentially in a hurry.
So that was a good outcome. The new owners of The Don I will get him sans rattle and with working brakes. And we got The Don II that started out sans rattle and (I assume) working brakes. Win win.
Now I should also point out that The Don II is not without his own problems.
The Chrysler 300S comes with a mirror dimming feature … essentially the rear view mirror can be set to dim either automatically or on demand by using the handy dandy touch screen on the dashboard.
Unfortunately the rear view mirror in The Don II was permanently stuck to dim. We tried all combinations of button pressing, cussed at it, Googled it … hey, we even read the instruction manual in the glovebox … all to no avail. Permanently dim 🙁
Then about 24 hours after we had picked up The Don II we had a realisation. It wasn’t the mirror that was the problem. The rear window of The Don II was tinted black – much blacker than is legally allowed in Australia.
Now who’s dim?
Yesterday – and in fact for several days now – I’ve commented on the complexity of the interstate system here in the US.
It’s not unusual to get an instruction like “In 300 metres, be in any of the left four lanes to take the exit to SH-23 East and then merge onto the FM1724” … and then be presented with a picture like the one below.
A lot of information to process while making sure you are in the correct lane, otherwise … Alabama, here we come …
So this morning we woke up at Bernadette’s house in Lafayette Louisiana …
… and it was pouring rain!
So we loaded up The Don II, and had a couple of cups of coffee (hazelnut coffee – not my favourite) with Bernadette while she alternately ducked outside for another cigarette and coughed up a lung. I’m pretty sure that those two events were somehow related.
When she wasn’t smoking or coughing, she was colouring in her colouring book. I hear that it is very therapeutic … colouring in, that is.
When our caffeine tanks were full, we headed off towards New Orleans but not before getting a picture at the Lafayette sign in town. Apparently it is the MOST photographed sign in Lafayette.
By the time we had taken photos, the rain had cleared and the day had turned into another beautifully warm and sunny Louisiana morning.
Yesterday we had spent all day in the Interstate, so today – rather than take the interstate again – we decided to “take the 90” from Lafayette to New Orleans.
Just as a matter of interest, The Don II got almost 30mpg on the trip from San Antonio to Lafayette which is a bit under 8 litres/100km in the new money. But now that I know how cheap fuel is, I’m not monitoring fuel economy so closely. I’ve even taken the fuel economy display off the dash and replaced it with something else.
So we hopped on the 90 and had a relatively leisurely cruise down to New Orleans through rural Louisiana. Maximum speeds of only 75mph today, so it felt like we were just puddling along.
We stopped for a late breakfast somewhere near Franklin LA (very rural Louisiana) and then got back onto the 90 again to continue our journey.
The trip was as uneventful as the roads were straight and predictable. Nothing to see here but a constant stream of traffic in both directions, and a whole lot of rural agricultural activity going on.
One thing that we have seen a lot of is people hauling caravans around the country-side – and they are big vans. Imagine the biggest vans that you see in Australia – these are at least half as long again. Many have three axles.
I’m telling you, everything is bigger in the USA!
There are a few things that we have seen none of though:
- Road rage – everyone seems to be very accommodating and plays nicely on the road;
- Vehicle accidents – maybe they move them very quickly, but we have yet to see any evidence of accidents;
- Road kill – despite travelling hundreds of miles/km so far, we have seen very little road kill alongside the interstates. We have certainly not seen any dead kangaroos!
We arrived safely in New Orleans around 1.30pm and went straight on a swamp tour.
We saw lots of turtles, bald eagle, egrets … and of course some ‘gators.
After the swamp tour, we went to our AirBnB (Danny’s place this time on Burgundy Street, New Orleans) and unloaded the car. Our AirBnB is about 2km from the French Quarter, so a nice easy walk each day (or about an $8.50 Uber ride).
It’s a really quaint, historic little place.
Tonight we caught an Uber (actually it was a Lyft) into the French Quarter to do a cruise down the mighty Mississippi River on the Creole Queen Paddle Wheeler, including a buffet dinner.
Dinner was amazing – Seafood Pasta, Jambalaya, Gumbo, Brisket, vegetables, Corn, Chicken, Caesar salad, Corn Bread …
It was sooo goood, and despite having eaten too much BBQ every day for the last few days, I still vowed that I was going to eat until I needed CPR – and I very nearly succeeded.
Now I know that the picture above doesn’t look like much, but it was my third helping 🙁
For a warm day, it was surprisingly clear and cold on the deck as we came back into New Orleans at the end of the cruise – about 9.00pm.
So that about wraps it up for the day. I need to go and slip into something comfortable – like a coma – while I digest the way too much food that I ate tonight.
I’ve been looking forward to trying jambalaya and gumbo for some time. They were really hot and spicy – so I could be in trouble in a couple of days – but they didn’t disappoint 🙂
Loved Texas, and loving Louisiana!
Tomorrow we head down to the French Quarter and soak up some Thanksgiving Day atmosphere.
You don’t really need to be a genius to work out the significance of today’s song and the title of today’s post – jambalaya! A classic Cajun dish!
I thought that yesterday’s song with CW McCall was a treat, but wait until you see tonight’s song … there’s not a lot of groups that can wear matching cowboy shirts and get away with it: Jambalaya (Roy Clark).
I would have preferred to give you the Hank Williams version, but I don’t think they made music videos back then …
Ciao
#G&KTAKEUSA2019