Our Cajun Adventure

I promised my sister, Emily, that I would not blog again until after my four tests next week. But, I have some extra time tonight while I'm waiting till midnight so I can register for classes for fall. oh yay.

Over Easter weekend Thomas and I were able to go to New Orleans with my family and then after we all spent Easter Sunday in Beaumont at our apartment. We had so much fun and found out that it is possible to sleep 8 in our apartment and have everybody take showers and get ready for church by 10 am. It must have been a miracle.

On to our trip.. As soon as we got to New Orleans we went straight to Cafe Du Monde to try some Beignets and oh boy.. they were amazing. However, if you have not been to Cafe Du Monde I recommend that you do NOT sit on the side where they have a window that you can peak in. You will most likely lose your appetite. You see exactly how they make the beignets. They deep fat fry them for a long time...a really long time. It was nasty. Surprisingly I still tried it and it was delicious but most everything that is deep fat fried is unfortunately. Then we walked around and went into different shops and over to the French Quarter. After a bunch of walking and site seeing we decided to get a bite to eat at a Cajun restaurant called Mulate's. It was a fun restaurant that had live music and dancing after seven. We were really adventurous and got an appetizer called the Cajun Sampler which consisted of Grilled alligator, calamari, fried craw fish tails, grilled frog legs, and tilapia! For those of you who don't know me very well I have hated fish for as long as I can remember. But, now that I live in Beaumont my taste buds seemed to have changed. I LOVE craw fish and tilapia and really almost anything. And I tried everything on the sampler. I was so proud of myself. Kailey, my youngest sister, had a hard time with the frog legs. Here is her face when she saw what our appetizer was :)
She is great. That ended our first day in New Orleans! The next day we got up early and went on a Cajun Encounters Swamp Tour. It was SO worth it. It was an hour worth of going through a swamp and it was SO much prettier than I had imagined. Although at the beginning I was a bit freaked out when our tour guide said it wasn't odd if a snake came on board but just to let him know and he would take care of it..and only one person had been bitten on his boat as a tour guide. One is one too many for me. Way too many. Luckily no snakes on our tour :) But we saw one alligator in the wild and we were able to hold an alligator! I would post my picture but I looked terrified so I'll post a picture of Thomas and my mom they handled it way better.

After the swamp tour we did some last minute shopping and hit the road back to Beaumont. BUT we made on amazing pit stop at the best craw fish place ever, Steamboat Bills. It is amazing and completely changed my out look on fish. It is amazing and if you are ever going through Louisiana its a great stop in Lake Charles. Surprisingly almost everybody in my family enjoyed the craw fish and Pistolettes. Warning: if you do try these at steamboat bills you will be hooked and crave it after leaving :)
After our yummy dinner we finished our drive back to Beaumont and had a wonderful Easter!

We will be making another trip to New Orleans and Steamboat Bills when Tom's brother James and his girlfriend Lauren come here from England. We are SO excited. Only a month more till they come and school is out for me!! YAY!