We realized the night before that our streetcar tickets would be good for 24 hours; since we didn't start out our second morning until 10 a.m., that meant we had until 10 a.m. our last morning to get free streetcar travel!
I finally remembered to take a pic of one. The history of these is really interesting!
So the kids and I headed out on one last adventure together in the French Quarter, doing something that was on my "must do" list but which had not happened the day before because of our family not feeling good enough to enjoy it: beignets at Cafe du Monde.
Because it is such an iconic New Orleans landmark, it was busy, even early in the morning, but the patio seating was still relaxing.
The change I got back from the waitress. Covered in powdered sugar.
A contented Smiley. Covered in powdered sugar.
After breakfast we walked along the riverfront to the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park visitor center (thank you Susan for the tip!).
Since I was carrying extra beignets and coffee for my parents, I sent the kids into the center to start learning while I waited--and I found behind the center a stone courtyard complete with bubbling fountain, peaceful and cool. I sat on a bench and enjoyed the moment, sipping my cafe au lait. I don't even drink coffee, but I had bought it with my breakfast because I knew it was the thing to do. It was delicious in this moment.
The kids and I hung around the visitor center learning about the origins and cultures of New Orleans until my parents got successfully out of the hotel and came to pick us up.
I had so very much wanted to see the famous old cemeteries there in the city, but the best were charging $20 per person for a tour. If we had more time and Mr. Incredible was with us I would have considered it, but as it was we settled for craning our necks and stealing a few photos over the wall.
Strategic siblings.
The planned adventure of the day yet awaited us, further down the coast of Louisiana: visiting a Creole plantation.
With a brief roadside stop to pick sugarcane. And taste it. Because, homeschool.
Some photos from the Laura Plantation tour:
Sometimes the small print tells a big story.
Former slave quarters.
Still used as a home until the 1970s.
The tour was interesting, because the stories of generations of Creole people who lived there were interesting, and said so much about the culture of that area and time. They knew so much about it because Laura Locoul Gore, the last owner of the plantation, began a memoir in 1934 of her childhood there. It was discovered by researchers in 1993 and is now published in book form as Memories of the Old Plantation Home. (Eschewing the expensive new copy being sold at the plantation gift shop, I later scored a used copy off of amazon, which we are now reading to follow-up on our learning.)
But the most interesting part of the plantation visit was the discussion I had afterwards in the gift shop, with Robin and Reggie, a couple from the San Francisco area who had been on the tour with us. They had visited another plantation previously the same day--the Whitney plantation, which focuses on the experience of the African-American slaves who lived and worked there. I had considered visiting the Whitney instead of the Laura plantation, but photos online make me think it is the Holocaust Museum of Louisiana plantation museums--intentional, powerful, important and worthwhile, but perhaps too raw and brutal for my youngest, most sensitive kid (who is, at this exact moment, hiding his head from the climactic intensity of a family movie we're all watching--Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, if that tells you anything), which made me not want to make that our only plantation experience. Cry selfishness and white privilege, but I didn't want to end this trip with a depressed and/or traumatized crew. But when I overheard Reggie commenting about the differences between the Whitney and the Laura Plantations to his wife during the tour, I asked them about their experience, as black Americans, with both.
We stood and talked for over half an hour, Reggie sharing how his family was from Louisiana, where his father, uncles, and grandfather had lived and worked there sharecropping under Jim Crow. But he had never asked them about their stories, never wanted to know. And so only now, in his 50s, is he waking up to all the history that belonged to his family, and himself. He and Robin shared too about their experiences--as native, city-dwelling Northern Californians--traveling in the South, where in Alabama a cousin they visited told them not to linger in that area at night. Suggesting they would be in physical danger from the Klan or other white supremacists?! Neither they nor I really knew quite what the cousin had been implying or why, but we were all astounded that such a worry would even exist. Funny, I felt at that moment our being Californians was more of a cultural connection than the color of our skins. I so appreciated Reggie and Robin sharing their story and perspectives, and wish I could contact them again back in CA, to ask about the rest of their journey to connect with family in the South. And maybe I can--as it turns out, Robin has a cousin who owns a restaurant in Soquel, just a few miles away from our home. It's a small world.
Driving away and heading back on the long drive gave us time to talk about all the things we had seen, done and learned. It was a really good trip, but so much to take in. I think we were all glad to head back to home base in Alabama. And then to start planning our second trip with my parents--to the Florida Keys!
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