Jambalya, Crawfish Pie and File Gumbo….

After two fantastic nights in New Orleans it’s back on the road at 7am this morning and heading about 150 miles west to Lafayette, where Jim & Caroline have their bikes booked in for various service items such as new brake pads, rear tyres and oil changes. We have all been well impressed with New Orleans although the apartment we booked through airbnb, whilst very convenient, could have been better for the money. We arrived quite late on Saturday afternoon after going to the local Apple store to get Caroline’s iPad fixed. I also tried to get my phone repaired but the cost was way to high, to say nothing of the wait.

We checked into the apartment, quickly showered, changed and headed down to Bourbon Street. On the way down, Caroline accosted a guy, who just happened to be a local tourist guide, to ask about good places to eat. We followed his recommendation and struck gold. The Gumbo Shop is definitely a “must do” if you’re ever in New Orleans. It has an enviable pedigree and the food is to die for! We opted for the set menu at $23.50 each but had just two menus between the three of us plus a portion of Alligator sausages. We started with two different Gumbo dishes, one chicken and one seafood with sides of spinach and corn. This was followed by two Jambalaya dishes and finished up with Pecan ice cream and Bread pudding with whiskey sauce. The two menus were more than enough to satisfy three hungry bikers with every morsel eagerly devoured and delicious. They even had a recipe book containing all the dishes that they cook, which Caroline bought, although it will probably cost her more to send it home than to buy! On the way down to the restaurant it was great to see all the wonderful old French style Art Deco buildings, most of which were in really nice condition and being lived in. We were already looking forward to seeing them in daylight.

Time to hit Bourbon Street and to sample to beers and the music… well, chaos comes to mind! It was more like Benidorm on a mass stag weekend than the Jazz Capital of the US. There were drunken tourists everywhere, we got ripped off $7.50 each for a pint of beer and were asked for $20 cover charge in a bar just to listen to the music. It really wasn’t what any of us were expecting or looking for so we wandered off so see a few more of the sights and then headed home for an earlier than expected night. Perhaps we were just too tired and weary to appreciate the revelries. I don’t think it helped with it being a Saturday night, or having a huge cruise ship docked in town.

Sunday morning and time to do our tourist bit! We wandered slowly back to Bourbon street, which in the cold light of a Sunday morning looked even better, but that could also have been due to the streets being almost empty. Amazingly, any debris from the previous evenings antic had already been cleared and the whole ambience, even without the accompanying sounds of jazz was fabulous. From Bourbon Street we headed down to the French Quarter and yet more beautiful streets and buildings. By this time Jim’s knee was starting to play up, so we left him with a pint and a book in a nice shady park whilst Caroline and I headed over to the water’s edge for a bit more exploring! Back at the park we enjoyed a couple of Peach ce cream Daiquiris and some fresh roasted corn before heading back to base for rest before starting all over again. Caroline’s internet research again paid off when she found a music venue for our evening’s entertainment; The Spotted Cat. No cover charge and sensibly priced drinks was the line that hooked us.

We had decided that we would try a different food stop and opted for the take away from which the tour guide had just emerged the previous evening. Again we hit the jackpot! I had the ribs, whilst Jim opted for the Corned beef sandwich with all the trimmings and Caroline the roast beef. At less than the cost of a McChuckup, it was superb value and very, very good. And so to the Spotted Cat and another 10 out of 10! They had a great little Jazz quartet playing and the girl vocalist was particularly good, reminding me somewhat of Diana Krall and as the web site had stated, the drinks, whilst not the cheapest  we had found were indeed sensibly priced. All in all, a great evening, in an incredible town. New Orleans most definitely ranks alongside Dawson City and Halifax as one of my favourites of the trip. Although it must be said, that the great company I was travelling with helped a lot. I think we were all a little sorry to say goodbye to New Orleans but it was a bright and early start Monday morning for Viator Performance in Lafayette to get the work done on Jim & Caroline’s  bikes, whilst I changed brake pads and riveted up the base of my pannier which I managed to damage rather badly by slipping off on a gravel road a few days back whilst doing a U-turn.  On the way across to Lafayette we passed such places as Baton Rouge and Blue Bayou in fact just about every town we pass in this part of the States is recorded in song somewhere!