New Orleans and Gulf Shores

     Our vacation this year took us to New Orleans, Louisiana then Gulf Shores, Alabama.  We stayed at the Lafayette Hotel, which was very nice and in a good location to all of the sites.  We had some excellent meals at Oceana (French Quarter) and Muriel's (Jackson Square) while we were there.  We cruised down Bourbon street like most tourists and watched the crazies, there were many and it was a weeknight.  Breakfast at Cafe Beignet was good, really who would turn down a funnel cake for breakfast.  

     The next morning we took a plantation tour (Oak Alley) which turned out to be an adventure just getting there.  Maps are rarely used nowadays with GPS available on smart phones but as we found out you can still be misdirected.  We never question the GPS directions but just blindly follow along where they take us, confident we will arrive without any problems.  Well, this time the GPS decided to make our trip a bit of an adventure taking us down a country road the dead ended on top of a railroad crossing without a road on the other side, WTF!  Apparently this wasn't enough fun so we were then sent down a dirt road that went through a cornfield dodging puddles and hoping we didn't have to stop because we would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere.  As we exited the dirt road to the paved highway both John and I had our iPhones set to the GPS and no lie, one phone told us to turn right and the other said turn left, thanks Steve Jobs.

     We decided to go old school and follow the signs on the highway arriving a short time later at Oak Alley.  Looking at the car when we got out it looked like we had been 4-wheeling through a swamp, mud was caked all over.  I ask the girl selling tickets if anyone has had a problem locating the plantation using GPS and she said "Oh yes, for some reason GPS directions don't work well for our location." That would have been useful information earlier in the day.  The plantation tour was interesting and informative but depressing to see how slaves were treated.

     Our last day in New Orleans were went to Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden district to see the above ground crypts then drove around the Garden district to see the beautiful mansions, fun morning but now we are off the Gulf Shores.

     We stayed at a VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner), which was a 2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment with a full kitchen, family room and a large balcony overlooking the beach.  This was the more relaxing part of our vacation spending mornings at the beach, taking a dolphin tour, hunting for ghost crabs at night with iPhones.  Ghost crabs are little white crabs that are almost invisible when they a motionless on the sand.  We watched others as they would catch the crabs and put them in buckets, not sure what they did with them, too small to eat.  One day drove over to the Marina and watched the boats come in with their catch of Red Snappers.  

     Crawfish was a popular menu item in Gulf Shores and we had it in grits and macaroni and cheese.  It was very good but I guess you could substitute shrimp and it would probably taste similar.  Another fun relaxing vacation with a bit of off-road adventure to spice things up.