Louisiana - New Orleans, bayou swamps, Oak Alley

After almost three (both relaxing and stressful) weeks home in France, I celebrated my return on the American soil with a vacation in Louisiana with my housemates. We spent five nights in New Orleans and we travelled outside the city on the last day.

New Orleans is a rather small city and I'd say you can even make the most of it in two days. It is still very impregnated by French colonisation, although not many people speak French cajun, most streets still have French names and then there's a French quarter and a French market that are quite famous. NOLA is very dynamic and has a festive and positive vibe. Even if we weren't very lucky with the weather (clouds and grey sky everyday), the city was still colourful and I felt like I was in a tropical place somehow. Inequalities are obvious there, some areas in the city remain rather poor because of Storm Katrina in 2005 and even not very safe whereas some others, as Garden District, are very rich with their huge colonial houses and mansions.

We did the city center (so the French quarter) by foot because it's small and you really need to walk around to discover all the different streets, their pretty shops and cafés. To go a bit further, we took buses and what they call 'street cars' which are kind of old fashioned tramways. Transportation is very cheap (like many other things in New Orleans) so we took day passes everyday and they only cost 3$. There are some places that you can't miss while visiting NOLA, like Jackson square, the French market, Bourbon street but I assume the best way to discover the city is just to walk around, have drinks in hidden bars where they play jazz music and eat some fried chicken for lunch or typical 'beignets' at Café Beignet.

On our last day, we decided to explore what's outside New Orleans so we went on a day tour to a swamp and to a plantation. The boat tour on the swamp was a bit disappointing as we didn't see real alligators, only two babies and some raccoons and then our guide had a baby alligator kept in a cage on the boat as an attraction for the tourists who wanted to 'pet' it. I found it absolutely disgraceful and sad, seeing the baby tied up being passed around by dumb tourists proudly posing with it for pictures...

Oak Alley plantation (where Forrest Gump was filmed) was more impressive. The place, despite its very sad history, was gorgeous and the tour in the colonial house was very interesting too. The sun was out and the temperature higher that afternoon, it was the best place to end up our day.

Louisiana was a very cool experience and is a very different place than any other city/state in the US. Living in the North East, obviously the gap is even bigger. The weather, the people, the architecture and the culture are all different – in the South it's more relaxed, stress-free, laidback and it was nice to see that way of living too. It was also great to spend some time away before starting the new semester as we'll be stuck here between the icy cold and snow storm for a while...