Louisiana: Oak Alley

While visiting New Orleans, we had to pay a visit to an old sugarcane plantation. There are many tours available, like swamp tours and horror walks, but we chose a plantation this time. There are several plantations that you can visit and we chose Oak Alley, which is probably the most famous one. It’s famous for the 12 oak alley that make up the road to the house. The oaks were planted around 1725 and nobody knows who planted them. The mansion was constructed in 1837 by Jacques Roman. It took 3 years to finish the whole building, which was of course built entirely by slaves. They even made the bricks for the house from mud of the Mississippi river.

The land and mansion now belongs to the Oak Alley association. You can read more about Oak Alley’s history here.

Oak Alley mansion.

On the road to the mansion.

Real slave cottages.

The backyard.

Inside the mansion.

The oak road.

Me and the love of my life.

Sugar canes and the burning of sugar cane plantation.
Burning of the land makes the crop grow better.

Some movies have been filmed here, at least partially, e.g. Interview with a Vampire. It was also said that Gone with the wind was partially filmed here, but I couldn’t find anything about it online. Maybe I will have to look at the movie again and see if I recognize any scenes.

If you visit New Orleans, I really recommend seeing one of the plantations. The history behind them is quite sad, but they sure are worth seeing. Just the architecture is amazing. Oh, and the good thing about visiting New Orleans in December, is that there are no mosquitoes! 😉

Have a great Weekend! And a Merry Christmas!

CC

Louisiana: New Orleans

Last weekend we made a 5-day trip to Louisiana. We were going there mainly for training, but decided to take a few days for some touristing in New Orleans. The drive from Del Rio to NOLA, as it’s called, was more or less 10 hours. Nice, huh? It’s literally a pain in the butt. 😀

New Orleans is located along the Mississippi river. It’s famous for its food and music. It’s very french, due to European settlers (obviously French) back in the days. We stayed in the French quarters and spent most of our time there on Thursday.

Breakfast the first morning at famous Ruby SLipper’s.

Royal street. Lot’s of antique shops, galleries, restaurants etc.

A really cool antique gun/firearm store. 

We paid a visit to Lafitte’s Blacksmiths Shop Bar, that was established in 1770’s. It was a well known pirate bar, that is said to be haunted.
Well, most of NOLA is said to be haunted for all I saw, lol.

One of the most famous things in NOLA is probably the Bourbon street (where the bar was also located). It’s like Austins 5th and 6th street, but vol 6.1. Luckily for us, it was quite cold, so that kept most drunks off the streets. It can get pretty bad from what I’ve heard! I just took pics from a few cute houses that we saw. 🙂

The cathedral.

I really liked NOLA and would love to see more of it! On Friday we went on a tour to a sugar cane plantation, but I will blog about that in a separate blog post.

Take care!

CC