Lizards and Lagniappe (NOLA Part 2) + Goodbye for Now

By now, this long overdue post is mostly just for ourselves...but hopefully there are still some of you out there keeping in touch! I think there are a few reasons it's taken so long to post it: 1) insanely busy schedules here in Boston 2) there's a kind of sad ending to it (more on that later), and 3) it should technically be our last post, so I kept putting it off to keep the blogging thing going!

All that said, I'm pretty excited to get our final pictures from the cross country trip out there. Here are our pics from the last 24 hours in New Orleans.

More plantations and HOT HOT weather in Vacherie, LA...

Then we journeyed down to the swamp, to check out Zam's Swamp Tours in Thibodeaux, LA!

Roar.

This place was hilarious. The animals were crazy, and the owners & tour guides were completely legit (you couldn't understand half of what our guy was saying, but it was totally worth it to listen to his awesome accent for 2 hours). We saw huge snakes & spiders, goats, geese, bugs, and all sorts of lizards. Even the junk gift shop provided 20 minutes of entertainment. Everyone should go to Zam's!


We then headed back to the city to clean off the sweat & alligator juice and fill ourselves with some jumbalaya and gumbo at Coop's Place, and then head out on the town for more music and beignets (we can't get enough of either of these).

The 12 man Lagniappe Band was a.m.a.z.i.n.g. So much energy & incredible musical talent. The bar was dead, which was great for us because we had the place to ourselves (more room for dancing!), but it was kind of pissing off the band. They started off with like 15 guys and slowing but surely dwindled down to about 8, so we decided to buy them a round of beers to cheer them up! They kept it going for us and the other 8 or so people in the bar, we danced & drank, Jim decided to start a brass band of his own, and our crush on New Orleans deepened.


We finally left, and grabbed some more beignets, because we're addicted.

After some sleep,we woke up, took a couple of pics of the hotel, then headed out of New Orleans. With a quick stop at d.b.a. bar first to grab Jim's forgotten debit card. And we may or may not have stopped for a beignet breakfast on the way out of town...

And now for the sad story you've been waiting for.......that picture above is the LAST PICTURE OF THE TRIP. Allie's brand new camera was stolen (along with other stuff) from her apartment just a week after we returned to Boston, with the rest of our pictures in it. No good!

But, on a positive note, we didn't have all that many good pics from AL through MA anyways, and google images can help pick of the slack! This is what we saw and experienced on the last leg of our trip:

Hiking in the Smokies

Deep Gap back-country shelter

Pigeon Forge, TN - where every awful stereotype of American's is displayed right in front of your eyes!

We ate at Golden Corral, $12 grease buffet! We were immediately sick and immediately ashamed.

We visited Al's bff SJM in D.C. - reuniting for the 1st time with important things like Papa John's and Jersey Shore

Ate delicious Pizza by Elizabeths in DE with Big Jim

Relaxed on the NJ shore with P & T

Then came HOME to Boston!

It was only 2-3 days between Louisiana and Boston, so I guess the camera didn't miss much after all!

Aaaand that concludes our American cross-country adventure. I have a feeling we'll feel the need to document our upcoming Europe travels as well...so we'll be in touch!

LOVE

A & J