Air Boating and New Orleans in the Afternoon

We decided air-boating might be fun - you know those big boats with a large propeller at the back to zoom around the swamps.  We set off with Captain Sam - just 6 of us in an airboat.  Ear muffs are on, because it is noisy, we speed out onto Lake Salvador near Lafitte.

After looking at New Orleans in the distance we venture into the wildlife areas where again we see alligators galore, including babies with their mum.  Apparently only 3-5% of the babies survive, getting eaten by predators and mum as well.  The canals have been formed for power cables to be run throughout so there is plenty of room to manoeuvre around and stop along the way to look at animals and plants.  Birds and bubbling methane marshes add to the interest. 

 My favourite flower in the swamp is the bull tongue - white and delicate looking, but the yellow daisies add to the colour along with the blue hyacinths.  I would say that the swamp tour yesterday gave us more variety in animals, but the air boat give a bit of a thrill like jet-boating as well.
After we arrived back at the hotel, we had lunch at the French Cafe - I had shrimp gumbo and it was very nice, too.  I am becoming a convert to Tanqueray gin since I arrived here.  After lunch we found the hop-on hop-off tour and went as far as the garden quarter. We had plenty of opportunity to check out the skyscrapers and the rest of the points of interest along the way.



We had enough time to view about half of the huge mansions in the garden quarter.  Apparently Brad and Angelina have a place here (up for sale I hear) and Sandra Bullock along with a few other movie stars.  The houses are very grand, all beautifully done up.  Here are a few of my favourites.

The footpaths are the worst of any big city I have visited but hey - first world problem!

We did manage to get the hop-on bus back to town,  even though it was 5pm by the time we arrived back at the stop.  I think that this tour is okay but the hours are a bit limiting as they finish at 5.30pm and we had to make several calls to be picked up and they made a special trip so we had the whole bus to ourselves..

We were dropped off at the visitor centre and walked back to the French Quarter, where we had dessert - sorbets and beignets at Cafe du Monde  This heart decorated model bus at the visitor centre actually looked like a coffin - I thought it might be quite good for one anyway.

Found some interesting art on the way home too.  And of course all homes are decorated for Halloween