Natchitoches, LA. Part Two

Staircase brought over from France in 1856

The second day in Natchitoches we spent in town wandering up and down the shops on Front Street.  They had some cool stuff including the oldest business in Louisiana the Kaffie Frederick General Mercantile that had been open since the 1800's I think.  It had a ton of stuff in it and we ended up getting presents for the kids there.  They had a bunch of boutique type stores with outrageously overpriced items that I would only be mildly tempted to purchase if they had been at a reasonable price.

Me waiting across the street while Patrick talked to the Carriage lady

We tried to go on a carriage tour of the city but the carriage they had out sat six people and the lady driving refused to take us if we didn't have a larger group.  We watched her sitting there throughout the day turning away people that came up in 2's and 3's.  Patrick even tried to go over and get in a with a group of three but she still didn't want to go out.  So instead she sat there playing on her laptop all day with no fares.  She was dumb.  We decided to try and go with the group of school teachers from our B&B the next day as that would make six of us (more on that later).

We had lunch as Lasyone's Meat Pie Restaurant as Natchitoches is famous for it's meat pies and the people we asked said this was the place to go.   It was very crowded and kind of hot, but nice to sit down anyway.  We waited about ten minutes for a table.  I got a meat pie and Patrick ordered red beans and rice with sausage.  The meat pie was pretty good, though I honestly didn't see what all of the fuss was about.  After that we decided to catch a movie.  We went to the matinee showing of X-men First Class.  I was thinking it would be nice to sit in the air conditioned theater for a couple of hours...but it started getting hot around the middle of the movie and I was fanning myself by the end.  The movie itself was pretty good.  I was distracted by the guy playing Magneto/ Erik Lensher as he looked alot like the guy playing Eric Northman in True Blood.  By the end I couldn't tell them apart.  Wolverines cameo was funny...  The movie theater people came in and flipped the lights on before the credits were even halfway done which I found annoying.  The guy told us there was nothing after the credits so we left, but it was still annoying.  After that we made a run to Walmart where I got two little outfits for the baby (and a copy of Steel Magnolias to watch...the innkeeper said every time they stock it it gets stolen) and Patrick got some tums and manilla folders (exciting I know).   We made it back to the B&B around 4 to discover that the a/c on the first floor had stopped working.  Patrick seemed very nonchalant about this and wanted to ignore it and take a nap.  I was freaking out because it was so hot and kept trying to convince him to call the people in charge since if we waited even an hour businesses would be closed and then no one could fix it and we'd die.  He finally agreed.  It had tripped a circuit breaker, which ours does at home all the time, and the guy came over and showed Patrick which one to fix should it happen again.  Patrick then took a nap and I watched Terminator 2 on tv...it took nearly three hours for the first floor to cool off again.  After Patrick woke up we went out to eat at the Pioneer Pub and Restaurant because our guide book said it would have live music.  It didn't, but that was okay.  I had a chicken/ziti pasta dish that was the special and Patrick had a Philly Sandwich.  The food was pretty good for the price even though the place was really more bar then restaurant.  Afterwards we got ice cream from Dairy Queen and tried to watch The Skeleton Key on netflix, since it's placed in Louisiana.  Unfortunately our internet went to crap and that didn't really work out too well.  I think we ended up watching some random show on tv...I think it was White Collar.  It wasn't as entertaining as I had hoped.

The next day we asked the ladies about joining for a tour and they readily agreed.  We met up with the one in charge at the Visitor's Center where she attempted to contact the carriage lady.  She actually answered her phone, which was a step up from our three unanswered calls/msgs the day before.  She said the driver was going to start late today for personal reasons but that she would call her back when she had a time for us.  The teacher lady also gave her an earful about the unprofessionalism of the driver the day before.  We waited around a bit to see if she'd call "right back."  She didn't.  While we were waiting another woman came in and overheard our conversation.  She handed out cards and explained that she did personal tours of the city or Steel Magnolias sites or plantations in your car for $30/group/hr.  After some discussion we decided this was a better deal and planned for all of us to go in our 7 passenger (at the moment anyway) van at 1pm.  This left us time to clean out the cereal from the seats and buy the kids some presents we had picked out the day before.  We also had time to visit the historic Fort St. Jean Baptiste.  We forgot to take pics, so I don't have any to show you.  It was a to scale reproduction of the original fort the town started from.  It was very small...and hot...and humid...inside the officer's quarters some birds had built a nest in the chimney and it had fallen.  The babies were still at the bottom and would start screaming if anyone came in.  The guy there said the mom still comes and takes care of them even though the nest had fallen and broken.  Two of them looked like they weren't going to make it, even though the guy said they were fine.  Patrick told them how he did ironwork.  They were very impressed.  After that it was nearly one o'clock so we all met up for our tour.  It started out as an historic Natchitoches tour, but we soon turned it into a Steel Magnolias tour.  The entire story in that movie is real and we were able to see both the filming sites as well as the actual sites where the story took place.  It was a very interesting experience.

Truvy's (Lizzy's) actual "salon;" an enclosed carport

Truvy's from Steel Magnolias

M'Lynn's house from Steel Magnolias (now a B&B)

Me...and sign

Afterwards Patrick and I had a sandwich and ice cream in a music store/sandwich/ice cream shop.   It was weird, they had instruments, music and then a counter and two little tables.  They had a big screen tv and were playing Prince of Persia.  It was near the beginning and we sat and watched it while we ate.  It was nice and quiet and a/c'd in there.  Afterwards we took our ice cream and drove over to get a closer look at the cemetery we had seen on our tour.  It was the one from the movie and had several old graves and cool ironwork.  There were a lot of kids graves too which made me sad so when we got back to the hotel I called our kids to make sure they weren't dead.  We went out to eat at Mama's Oyster House because they also had live entertainment.  It was pretty cool.  I had a catfish po-boy and Patrick ordered fried frog legs 'cuz I wanted to try them.  We got to keep the plastic cups our drinks came in so that was cool too.  That night we rented The Skeleton Key from blockbuster and watched it....I then watched Steel Magnolias after so I wouldn't be scared. ;)

Patrick on Front Street

Gazebo at our B&B

Freak'n huge 12 foot tall sunflowers...they're actually a ways behind him

The last day there we had a nice breakfast of fruit 'n yogurt parfait and french toast with strawberries and whipped cream.  We made one stop in town to get fudge (and some earrings I wanted) and then headed to the Alligator Park.  It was hot.  There were alligators...I took some pics.  There was a bus full of blind kids that came about the time we did.  I'm not sure how much they were able to get out of the park.

Me holding an alligator for a $7 polaroid

We found Gollum at last!

Patrick 'n the gators

Feeding time

The donkey was hungry too...

On the drive to and from we read from one of the Sookie Stackhouse books (we've been reading these on road trips since we started watching True Blood).  About 15 minutes from home I suddenly got car sick and we had to pull over so I could puke on the side of the road.  That was fun.  I guess no visit to Louisiana is complete without Kiera puking in the street. (I inexplicably got sick in the street when we went to New Orleans 8 years ago too).   So that's our trip.  Aren't you jealous?

Natchitoches, LA. Part One

Patrick and I just got back from a little "babymoon" my friends Margie and Josh were so nice to make possible for us.  Margie agreed to watch our kids for a few days so we could get away for awhile.  Now Patrick has been away on business trips and such several times over the years but I have not been without kids since Isabelle was born five and a half years ago.  We considered several different areas to go to, including New Orleans, Galveston and Eureka Springs, AK, but settled on Natchitoches, LA.  Nagadoches you say?  No, Natchitoches....the first is in Texas and pronounced "Nack -a-doch-es" and the second is in Louisiana and pronounced "Nak-a-d(t)ish".  Both were named after a Native American tribe in the area, the difference being that the TX one was the Spanish interpretation of an Indian word and the Louisiana one was a French interpretation.  Anyway, Natchitoches was the filming site of the movie Steel Magnolias.  I watched this again back in March and realized how close it was to where we live (only five hours or so).  I immediately called Patrick (he was away at the time) and told him we should plan a weekend or something there.  So when Margie volunteered to watch our kids we were able to get away for four nights and five days.

   We stayed at a lovely B&B called "The Queen Anne".  We stayed in the Library Room, which I think was the best looking room.  The only drawback being it was located right off the parlor, directly across from the front door and had two 10' pocket doors rather than a regular door.   There was a plaque outside the room simply stating "Library" ('cuz that was the name of the room).  Unfortunately, everyone who came thought this meant there was a library in there and were constantly trying to open our doors...there was also a crack you could see through on the bottom half of where the doors joined, so I wasn't comfortable changing or anything in the bedroom as someone could be trying to peer through the doors to see.  Other than this, the room was awesome;

Cool Setee and bookshelves..."library room" get it?

Really big bed...

Pretty armoir with the tv and deceptively comfy couch. 

The first night we arrived we were the only guests there and had our run of the place.  They had a huge bowl of those yummy mints that crush when you bite them in the parlor.  Needless to say we made a serious dent in the bowl before we left. ;)  That first night we went into all of the other rooms (all of which were on the second floor) and decided that even though some of them had two person jacuzzi's and ours was only a single, the size and decor still made ours the best.  We ate at Chili's that night where I ordered a "thick and frosty chocolate shake."  Never ever order this.  There is no ice cream and I sincerely doubt there is any milk in it either.  It looks more like those powder mixes you can blend with crushed ice to make a "shake."  Yuck.

 

They say the gate stays white because John Wayne touched it..

 The next day after breakfast we decided to try and tour the plantations in the area before I got too tired from walking.  This was a good idea, if we had tried it later in the week I may have died.  The first plantation we saw was Oakland.  It had been privately owned until very recently and the family still visited on occasion and even gave tours now and then.  It was pretty cool to see the outbuildings and such.  The main house was interesting and had been decorated in a 1950's style to portray how it had looked while the family had been there.  Very interesting...

Trundle bed in the kids room

The next plantation we saw was the Magnolia plantation.  It was cool because it had belonged to the black mistress of the son from the Oakland plantation (Therese Coin-Coin...or something).  They had ten children together and he built her this place to live.  Later it became better known as an artist colony in the early 1900's.  Many famous people stayed here including Earnest Hemingway and Steinbeck, though they were only there for a week or two.  Apparently the woman who ran the place, who was widowed very young, would let anyone with "talent" stay there for free, but she would ask everyday what they had accomplished and if they hadn't done anything in three days they were invited to leave.   It was more traditionally decorated, which was cool.  It was also home to Clementine Hunter,  a former slave painter who is known for her "primitive" art.

 

Magnolia Plantation

African House...ignore the 2x4's holding up the sides

Forge in Blacksmiths shop at Melrose

The last one we saw was the Melrose plantation.  This one only had the grounds open as the home was still a private residence.  There were some archaeology people from UT Houston there doing a dig and after I casually mentioned that I had studied anthropology and taken an archaeology field school class, they became our best friends and showed/told us all sorts of cool stuff involving Hoodoo deposits they had found in an old midwifes quarters as well as the blacksmiths forge.  It was cool.   It was also very hot...and humid, that part sucked.
 

Had to stop...

That night we came back to the b&b to find that four ladies had arrived.  They were all kindergarten teachers who met up every four years or so to travel together.  They were very nice and reminded me of my mom...but this meant we kept a little more to our room then we had the previous night.  After we showered (cuz it was so muggy you were dripping sweat all day...many were concerned that I was going to get dehydrated since I was so pregnant), I decided we should dress up for dinner...'cuz we had brought the clothes.  So we went to The Landing Restaurant on historic Front Street.  It wasn't really a "have to dress up" kind of place, but it was fun to be fancy anyway.  Shortly after we arrived a band started playing, which was cool.  We had fried alligator for an appetizer...it tasted kind of like chicken.  Of course it was breaded and fried and dipped in ranch, so I guess the natural flavor was probably covered up pretty well.  We got the waitress to take a pic of us...Patrick had a hard time understanding her accent, which I thought was funny since I hardly heard one.  That was an interesting side note.  We really didn't hear many thick or obvious accents at all.  I wondered if it was because of the naturalization brought about by television and such obscuring local accents...Patrick thought it was more likely that we had lived in the south so long that we didn't hear it anymore.  I think he was right as we were both speaking with an accent by the time we left...

Aaw, aren't we cute? ;)

After dinner we went back to the hotel and managed to watch an episode of Psych on the computer using their free wifi.  This was the only night this worked.  I think our laptop had a virus or something and didn't work too well after that for more then just checking email and such.  I don't know why the pics are so blurry...I blame our cheap crappy camera.  Sometimes it decides to focus, other times it can't be bothered.  Stay tuned for Part Two of our trip. ;)

PS: Sorry about the random pic placement, blogger is being stupid.