Journeys with Jane: Friday: The beginning of the end of our adventure

Today dawned bright and sunny with clear blue skies. Gone were all of the rain clouds of yesterday, but that system did leave behind cooler weather and a stiff breeze...the kind of confusing weather that makes you want to wear shorts or cropped pants AND a jacket at the same time.

We had breakfast at the motel this morning. It took Olen and me a few minutes longer to eat than it did the others, so they started back to the room ahead of us. When we got to the room, they were all hiding grins, and Sabrina said innocently, "I am sure we were not doing anything suspicious." As I am sure you realize...when a fourteen-year-old tells you they are NOT doing anything suspicious, you need to begin immediately to look for suspicious activities. Apparently there are numerous group selfies now on Olen's phone, but their disappointment will be in finding that Olen never takes any pictures with his phone, so it may be months until he notices "nothing suspicious".

The three amigos are still grieving over not getting any more of the warm chocolate melting cake we enjoyed on the cruise. To save breath, they have shortened the name to WCMC when discussing the delicacy.

We drove back to the area of the French Quarter of New Orleans to take a two-hour walking tour of the area. Our guide was extremely well-informed on the history and culture of the area, with abundant oinformation about restaurant selections for adventurous eaters. (We would have been happy if he could have pointed us toward the nearest Burger King, but I realize not everyone shares our view.)

While on our tour we re-took some of the cloudy-day tourist photos we took yesterday, plus many new ones.

This is said to the most photographed building in the French Quarter.

We learned about what the guide referred to as the historical "Fs' of New Orleans...flooding, fire, fever, and food". We learned about the architecture, and enjoyed seeing all sorts of street-entertainers, such as a dog who played dead and was lying in a dog-sized casket, a man dressed as a human transformer toy, various mimes, serious musicians, jazz musicians of all types, a human teddy bear puppet, a man apparently defying gravity, and several ladies dressed in feather costumes (we predict they will never get off the ground). It was windy and cool this morning, so this lady played classical violin music while she was wrapped in a sleeping bag to keep warm.

We ate lunch at the French Market, which the guide books describe as "similar to European markets". We found the area to be more similar to a rural flea market, or perhaps a blue-light special at K-Mart. We did eat a hamburger there while listening to a jazz band. We did not intend to listen to the Jazz band...it just happened to be playing close to the hamburger area.

We planned to leave the New Orleans area by driving across Lake Pontchartrain on the 26-mile causeway, but when we got to the causeway area we learned that there had been a really bad wreck on the causeway and all north-bound lanes were blocked. So much for that plan. We headed around the east side of the lake...along with everyone else who had planned to go over the causeway, so it was slow-go for a while.

Finally we arrived in Meridian, MS, our destination for the night. Our motel has an indoor pool and the water was a similar temperature to bath water. The three amigos enjoyed extended pool time, and they had the entire pool to themselves!