(c) 2010 Lydia Hinshaw
Chicken of the sea?ST. MARTINVILLE, LA -- State Parks with wi-fi, and Cajun Country without Cajun food. Who would have believed it?
We spent Sunday wandering through South Louisiana, on a route described in some tourist brochures as the Tabasco Loop. I am not the Tabasco fan in the van, but I'll go along with some crazy schemes in the hopes of seeing stuff I haven't seen before.
So Sunday was a bit of a disappointment. I saw plenty of stuff I've seen before, small towns with dead business districts, bypassed by four-lane highways lined with the same franchise restaurants and big-box stores I could see on Granada Boulevard.
Prince Charming and I were hoping to stumble upon some battered fish camp along some bayou, a place where we'd sit at picnic tables and eat crawfish. Sadly, we didn't see anything like that all day. We did spot the occasional non-franchise restaurant, but every last one was closed because it was Sunday. We wound up in a fast food joint in New Iberia, eating shrimp po'boys prepared by a Vietnamese family. Tasty, but not quite what we were expecting.
New Iberia is the hometown of one of our favorite writers, James Lee Burke, who has written 16 novels set in the town along Bayou Teche. All of the novels involve brutal murders committed by thoroughly evil perps. As we walked around downtown, I couldn't help looking over my shoulder for some dastardly person bent on doing in a couple of tourists.
But there was almost no one else on the streets, and we didn't spot a single crime scene.
The most interesting thing I saw in New Iberia was a live pantry on about a 30-foot trimaran sailboat tied up to a seawall in the center of town. The boat-owner had a cage with several small fowl destined for the pot one of these days.
Tomorrow being Monday, more stuff should be open in these parts. We're going to continue our search for crawfish.
We spent Sunday wandering through South Louisiana, on a route described in some tourist brochures as the Tabasco Loop. I am not the Tabasco fan in the van, but I'll go along with some crazy schemes in the hopes of seeing stuff I haven't seen before.
So Sunday was a bit of a disappointment. I saw plenty of stuff I've seen before, small towns with dead business districts, bypassed by four-lane highways lined with the same franchise restaurants and big-box stores I could see on Granada Boulevard.
Prince Charming and I were hoping to stumble upon some battered fish camp along some bayou, a place where we'd sit at picnic tables and eat crawfish. Sadly, we didn't see anything like that all day. We did spot the occasional non-franchise restaurant, but every last one was closed because it was Sunday. We wound up in a fast food joint in New Iberia, eating shrimp po'boys prepared by a Vietnamese family. Tasty, but not quite what we were expecting.
New Iberia is the hometown of one of our favorite writers, James Lee Burke, who has written 16 novels set in the town along Bayou Teche. All of the novels involve brutal murders committed by thoroughly evil perps. As we walked around downtown, I couldn't help looking over my shoulder for some dastardly person bent on doing in a couple of tourists.
But there was almost no one else on the streets, and we didn't spot a single crime scene.
The most interesting thing I saw in New Iberia was a live pantry on about a 30-foot trimaran sailboat tied up to a seawall in the center of town. The boat-owner had a cage with several small fowl destined for the pot one of these days.
Tomorrow being Monday, more stuff should be open in these parts. We're going to continue our search for crawfish.
No comments:
Post a Comment