We started on the outskirts of the French Quarter and made our way to the Central Business District and biked in the trolley lane down to the water. We next biked to the Garden District, a really beautiful residential area with very old homes and wealthy inhabitants, and where we explored an old graveyard with enormous family crypts. It was so interesting to see the distinction between the wealthier families' marble crypts and the poorer families who were put into unmarked tombs along the wall.
Our next stop was the French Quarter, and on our way there we biked down a large road that was also the parade route. The trees along the route had beads still hanging from their bare branches, and Josh snapped a photo of one little tree just completely covered in beads!
I definitely enjoyed Darryl's tour of the French Quarter more than our tourist walk. He was a great guide, constantly pointing out architectural and historical points of interest. We stopped at Croissant D'Or, a small bakery, for (another) breakfast.
We biked back to the cars, but not before Darryl pulled out one more surprise... we walked to a nearby house on a large lot and learned that it is a "hostel" for local and visiting artists. It reminded both of us of the house in Fight Club... we only spent a few minutes looking at the art on the walls before we were in the backyard. The artists had built an enormous "tree house" out of lots of random materials, like industrial ladders, lots of pieces of wood, and caution tape.
It looked like it might fall at any moment, but Darryl hopped on and quickly ran to the top, so I slowly made my way up as Josh took photos from below. Once Josh climbed up to the main sitting area we took a few photos and climbed back down... words really can't describe the crazy creation!
After thanking Darryl and saying goodbye, we headed to Lafayette. Darryl had mentioned a quaint small town called Breaux Bridge outside of Lafayette, so we explored that for about an hour. It was definitely the cutest town we've seen in Louisiana thus far!
We met our host, Kate, around 5 PM at her townhouse in Lafayette. Kate is currently getting her PhD from University of Lafayette in microbiology. She took us on a tour of the downtown area; it was pretty empty because it was like 6 PM on a school night, but we got to see lots of art galleries through the windows.
Kate then took us to Prejean's, a local Cajun restaurant. It was a little pricey and right by the highway, but the food was good and they had a Cajun band and Josh and I shared a plate of etouffee and fried crawfish.
Josh and I had the same high for the day: the bike ride this morning! It was so nice to see a great side of New Orleans; it almost made up for our terrible self-guided Bourbon Street tour. We also had the same low... going over budget at Prejean's sucked! However, our post-gas budget is about $20 per day total, so it's not the end of the world if we slightly go over it. Josh's ho was getting yelled at by the fiddle player when he took a photo of the Cajun band, and my "ho" was the crazy cat lady who lived in the artist's house... she was like a cartoon character!
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