For the Best in Cajun Food go to Lafayette!

 A group of us from church took an overnight trip to Louisiana to see some local cultural sites, take a swamp boat tour of the bayou and eat, eat, eat! Our group leader, Joe Landes,  knew all the best places to pleasure your taste buds in Lafayette and we ate like royalty.

We(Karen Brewton, Nita Blazer, Joe and Janet Landes, and Sally Evans and yours truly), arrived in Lafayette about noon and started our tour of the area by going directly to our first dining spot... Olde Tyme Grocery. Highly recommended by Joe, I had a fried shrimp poorboy and it was so so good. I am not sure what everybody else had to eat, but it couldn't have been better than my poorboy.   

 

It is about the food and not the building.

The bread was crusty on the outside and soft on the inside, stuffed full of shrimp and the tomato must have been vine-ripened because it had that natural acidic taste.  As my dad would always say "That boy is in hog haven!"

Avery Island is just south of Lafayette and home to McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce.

 

Production Line - automation still fascinates me. 

Don't slip and fall into a vat of hot sauce...

                    Barrels of tabasco sauce are aged for three years. They are topped with layer of salt.

Avery Island is also known for its salt mine.

Avery Island also known for it's large rookery of Greater Egrets and Snowy Egrets.  

                                                    Adorable chicks!

Special delivery!

This live oak probably has lived as many years as all of us added together.

Avery Island has a large alligator population

I had to look this one up ..... Dragontail

 

There was an abundance of wild strawberries - They were not sweet. 

Joe put us on some more delicious cajun food! Excellent meal, fine wine and great conversation at  Cafe Vermillionville. I had my first ever bowl of turtle soap. 

Breakfast pastries from Poupart Bakery.... That is such a fun name to say.  Poupart, Poupart, Poupart 

Poupart's Cajun Wedding cookies (Cocoons) - I bought a few of them so I could compare with Christina's Mexican Wedding cookies which are my favorite cookie. I liked them but they aren't even in the same ball park as Christina's. 

Such a heavenly sweet thing ...... and a Chocolate Dobash!

Champagne Family Swamp Tour sign in true Cajun tradition.

 Oversize flatbottom for Swamp tour 

Alligators rule the swamp

The swamp has its own quiet and peaceful spirit.  The Spanish Moss hanging in the cypress trees kind gives it a spooky feeling. 

Look closely at the cavity at the base of the tree.  

 

Roadside battle between two male alligators.  Quite rare to observe such am encounter.

 

I wish I had asked my mother to teach me her language when I had the chance.

                                             Beautiful historic Catholic Church
 

                                                                         So beautiful!

Oysters anyone? The best charbroiled oysters in Lafayette and maybe the whole world- Drago's Seafood. If you are wondering about their raw oysters, you will have to check with Karen as she was the only one who had a plate of them.