17.6.2012 – 17.6.2012  31 °C

Early start today as we continued our drive into New Orleans. Today we passed thru four states, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana all in the space of a couple of hours of driving! Our first stop for the day was in Mobile (pronounced Moe-beel), Alabama. Our main point of stopping in this Gulf town was to see the Antebellum houses (pre-civil war mansions).. HOLY SMOKES there are some houses in this town! We stopped in one part of the town, Oakridge, and just wandered around looking at the beautiful trees and houses. Many of the houses are actually for sale so when we got a chance later we actually looked up the prices.. not super exy for what you get! Mid 200s up to late 300s for a really nice Antebellum house!!! Needless to say, when I win lotto I may just come back to Mobile, Alabama and buy me one of them houses!! Most of the houses were pre-civil war or built just after the war finished and they look tip top.. Who knows, one day I may be able to own a slice of my very own Tara!!

As our drive continued we crossed out of Alabama (it’s a gambling free state we discovered, so no chance of winning lotto here!) and into Mississippi. Immediately, we were confronted with the good old strip of casinos, I guess just ripe for Alabama-ian’s to cross the border and gamble away their lives!! This part of the journey was directly along the Gulf coastline and it was surprising to see huge swathes of land that are for sale. Prime beach front land with gorgeous old oak trees on the property all for sale! I’m only guessing, but I think the houses might have been wiped out in Katrina and never been rebuilt? For whatever reason, you can buy PRIME beach front land in Mississippi on the Gulf Coast for less than 500k…. Now, if I could have spent 10k to buy a piece of land I would have laid down the money then and there….. 500k with no job and no chance of getting a loan.. Hmmmm… Might still need to work on the lotto side of things! 🙂 The other impressive thing about Mississippi is the fuel price!! It’s about 76c a litre!!!! The price of fuel hasn’t been that cheap since I started to drive a car!!! It looks like Mississippi is the place to come live if you want to save some cash (maybe there might be a reason… I might need to do some more digging once we start our drive up the Mississippi)

We arrived into New Orleans after lunch time and dumped our stuff in our hotel. The drive into NO was interesting, the outer suburbs are every bit as dumpy as is portrayed on tv.. The French Qtr itself is old. Some parts could do with a really good paint job and Bourbon St is as sleezy and dodgy as I expected. The music though wafts out of many of the restaurants and pubs and there are many street buskers so all in all, welcome to New Orleans!!

Our afternoon culminated in us going for a walk thru the French Qtr and down to see the mighty Mississippi River. One of the touristy steam boats was at the dock so we got a good view of a mighty Mississippi steam boat complete with the wafting tunes of Dixie Jazz! Dinner was local Creole fare, Craw Etouffee (Crayfish in a chilly broth with rice) for myself, Blackened fish for M, Oysters for D.. The meal was pretty good although I was disappointed in how lacking in flavour my dinner was, it was chilly spicy but that was all.. Really could have done with some other spices, bay leaves come to mind! Our night finished with us enjoying some jazz music in one of the less sleezy bars on Bourbon St.

Song of the Day– Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sweet Home Alabama