Houston and Nawlins

From San Antonio, we went to Houston, TX and stayed at Dick and Chantal's lovely home. I've known them for many years from Venasque, France. It was an absolute pleasure to stay with them and Chantal's food is always incredible!

Fromage plate

Chantal's "tailgate salami" is a deliciously sweet log of dark chocolate filled with pretzels, nuts, and marshmallows. They can be found here :)   http://www.cdgourmethouston.com

Almond pound cake mmmm

Beef stew (cooked with onions and beer, yum!), mashed potatoes, and Belgian style baby carrots

Mas Saint-Louis! Had such a wonderful visit!!

The drive from Houston to New Orleans started out pretty rainy, we could barely see in front of us for a couple hours. But it cleared up about halfway there.

Don't poke a sleeping bear... Take pictures of him instead! :-P

Louisiana trees

Swamp

Our hotel in New Orleans! Loved the exposed brick. I went to pull back the curtains of this "window" to discover that it was in fact a mirror. It scared the crap outta me!

Bourbon Street

Sampler plate at ACME Oyster House which consisted of jambalaya, gumbo, red beans and rice, and sausage. Probably my favorite meal during our visit in NOLA.

ACME charbroiled oysters. I was highly unimpressed with these. All I could taste was garlic and cheese! I thought they would just be charbroiled and that's it, not have all that stuff on it. Was disappointing, but now I know!

Band on Bourbon Street. These guys were killin it!! This was the only time we saw this kind of live band during our visit and we wished we had stayed to listen to them longer!

Turns out this dog naturally sleeps like this, so his owners decided to capitalize. Murricah!

Hey new friend!

Mechanical bull escapades. It's harder than it looks, people!

Annnd I'm off

I see you!

Sharing is caring!

Of course, beignets from Café du Monde

Nomnomnom

This was an enormous clarinet painted on the Holiday Inn!! Shadow and all, super cool!

Shep's NOLA bucket list: Willie Mae's Scotch House for some fried chicken. We saw Cooper Manning here!

Yummy corn muffins

I'm a huge fan of green beans, but these were rather lackluster.

Mac and cheese wasn't anything special either. Plenty of places in Georgia for good southern food!

Red beans and rice

Butter beans and rice

Friiiiiiiieedd chicken. The consistency of the outside almost reminded me of funnel cake, but it wasn't sweet. Was pretty good. But again, I'm from Goh'ga. We got this ;)

Cemetery in Treme

Beautiful sky

Lots of wear and tear from time and Katrina. Many of these graves were from the 1800s. I liked the little plant emerging from this one, and it's a little eerie how it's open!

Shadow shot

Crazy crooked. Aaand empty.

I almost took some shells that were on the ground all over the cemetery but Shep yelled at me saying it was bad luck. Fiiiiinnnee.

Abita!!

Dinner our last night. Another sampler platter of crawfish étouffée, jambalaya, red beans and rice, turnip greens, and potato salad. Was alright.

Gumbo

Fritzel's house band. These guys were FANTASTIC!!

View of St Louis Cathedral from Bourbon Street

Trolley

Hootie got a little sloppy...

He thinks he's invincible when he drinks...

Ohh, Hootie!

I have been home now for a couple days and I will admit that even though I had an extremely wonderful trip and a fantastic time, I am relieved to be back home for a bit. I missed cooking so much!! :-P I have been relishing the ability to be back on a more strict diet of no meat and no dairy. I was quite lenient with what I ate on my trip and while maintaining dietary limits while traveling is very do-able, it's considerably easier at home. Also, being able to get back to exercising regularly (as I'm kind of training for a half marathon in March o.O) has been really nice as well.

But fear not! My travel blog does not stop here! If all goes according to plan, I will be in Australia in a little over a week!! I'm toying with the idea of stopping by New Zealand or South America on the way home, but we shall see..... Stay tuned!

I'm working out everything for my visa, shots, insurance, WWOOFing hosts, accommodations, travel, etc for my China trip that I plan to leave for in early April. I'd like to go to Cambodia, Thailand, and Hong Kong before going to Shanghai to begin my WWOOFing adventures. I plan on coming home by just continuing to travel west so that it's an around-the-world trip! And I'd love to visit Morocco on the way back. Gonna try to reach every continent (except Antarctica) THIS YEAR!! Gonna really try and make it happen! :-D