The Big Easy: Day Three

This morning, we all got up and at 'em fairly early--up at 9-ish, and out of the house around 10.  We decided to check out the Garden District and Magazine Street, so we drove there and found a restaurant on Magazine Street for breakfast, which was okay but not spectacular.  We walked down and back up the street, looking at the shops, then drove around the garden district gawking at mansions.  After a while of that, we decided to find a plantation house to tour, googled, found one, and set off in search of it.  After a few false starts trying to figure out exactly which freeway viaducts and ramps the GPS was trying to get us to take, we found ourselves at the Destrehan Plantation, which, unfortunately, was hosting a fall festival today.  It was packed with people, parking was a ways away, and it was pretty warm and would be humid on the grassy grounds covered with trees.  So we decided to skip it.  We drove toward another planation house, but it was more of a B&B and not really open to the public, so we just gawked and drove away.  Heading back to the freeway, we drove through an interesting neighborhood that included some pretty nice houses, some run-down trailers, and some completely abandoned and rotting houses and trailers.  Odd.

We went back to the house, where Jen and I stayed, while Eric and Ying headed off to do a little more shopping (Ying has friends who sent her with shopping missions to bring stuff back for them).  Jen and I did a little walking tour of the neighborhood, and happened upon a Veterans Day or Marine Corps Birthday parade, and also a gaggle of cheerleaders--not sure if they were part of the same parade or not, since they were blocks away from it.  Mostly, we took photos of interesting houses in the neighborhood where we're staying.

Now we're back at the apartment, with a bit of time to kill before we figure out where Eric and Ying are and meet up with them for dinner and our last night in the Big Easy.