Fried Green Magnolias at Midnight in the Cold Mountain Garden

Easter Sunday began with a petting zoo, stocked with some very cute ducklings and an alarmingly duck-hungry rabbit, who had to be put in timeout after vicious attacks on several of his fellow attractions.

The subsequent easter parade felt a bit half-hearted, but did feature some impressively hatted ladies distributing stuffed toys to children and one of your intrepid investigators (not the one you're thinking...)


We sampled the staples of the (nomenclature-disputed) Gambia, which was surprisingly delicious  and then met with our second Bosnian cab driver (???) and embarked on one of those extremely painful try-to-find-place-located-on-XYZhighway-number-abillion and hire our DODGE CHARGER. That's right, after only a small amount of making the most of southern hospitality we were hitting the road to our plantation house sans the"or similar" aspect of car hire that haunts the cheap and un-pushy.

We arrived at the stunning (and oddly, owned by Sydney healthcare-magnate Paul Ramsey) Nottoway in time for a sunset stroll of the grounds, sipping mintless juleps on our balcony and saying (well, declaring) "well, I do declare" in an attempted Kentucky accent. There followed a brief period explaining that veal was probably not a key staple of a vegetarian's diet and dinner on the private bowling alley built for the original owners' 11 children.... I do declare it was a very fine experience indeed.  In keeping with the emerging support-our-troops theme of the holiday, we were somehow granted a military discount on both room and dinner.  Semper fi!

Who dat who say dey gonna beat dem hornets?

This season, approximately 80% of the New Orleans' opponents have correctly predicted dat dey would be among the large group of teams who would prove capable of besting the suddenly lowly Hornets, and I suspect most of the remainder at least thought they were going to win.

Such was the case with the unfortunate Minnesota Timberwolves, who couldn't quite hold off a hornets team that had been granted an extra dose of patriotic fervor on "military appreciation night", which appeared to consist exclusively of dressing the cheerleader in ill thought-out khaki bikinis.  All six Hornets fans in attendance were suitably excited about their (rare) victory over a superior team (very common).

Winding back a bit... Nawlins is definitively on the manic side of the United States' bi-polar relationship with the demon drink.  Not only are they allowed to sell it, as will not be the case in some parts of the South - Lynchberg, for instance, whose name serves as a reminder of the potentially dangerous consequences of getting a bunch of economically disappointed white folks liquored-up -  but they can mix you some of the finest craft cocktails this side of our lounge room and then dejectedly pour them into a plastic "go cup" so that you can get hammered without missing a moment of the action.

And such action!  Bourbon Street, in particular, is well paid to think of itself as the vomit repository that never sleeps (in close competition with the tube, were it to stay open past midnight), even if that means half-heatedly yelling "party!!" at tables of Eastern European tourists just trying to have a chat over their cups of hurricane-flavoured syrup. Four of us were able to dominate a dance floor during the not-much-in-demand 2-3pm shift (following a n\helpful round of test tube shot masquerading as "cocktails", to a version of Jay Z's "on to the next one" so bowdlerized that even "cojones" had been bleeped out, and a version of Mystikal's "shake dat ass" so unbowlderized that the title is the only portion I can reproduce in this (allegedly) polite company.

Your intrepid investigators were also able to put a significant dent in the seasonal crawfish stocks, sample the uniquely creole  basketball treat of nachos in a spinach and artichoke sauce, accompany an eldery lady on the maracas and pay $5 to listen to an elderly black man complain about his life, despite the fact that such experiences can be had for free on any corner in the city.

 The night ended with a suitably ironic pabst blue ribbon and a well-earned collapse into a giant, American -sized bed.


(Days since last food poisoning/lost items incident: One)

Laissez les bons temps rouler !

So our day of persuading ourselves that 6am London time was actually 6am Central time ended with complimentary three-gin cocktails from an indulging waitress and a reunion with our (yes, already) lost camera. First day - not too bad.

Paul had started the morning with an item-by-item inspection at Heathrow and continuing this streak of lucky special attention from security we all had our first ever experience with the controversial milowave scanner at Houston airport - suffice to say a design that didn't require you to assume the execution pose immediately on arrival in death-penalty enthusiastic Texas may have had a warmer reception! (Oh, and of course Paul was subjected to full body pat down by a man wearing cowboy boots.)

But all was well on touch down in New Orleans (the main risk to date: that someone takes badly to Paul's insistent impersonation of a Cajun, which consists mostly of using the word "dat" and attempting to "guar-on-tee" things. Hopefully our airboat tour driver on Monday can extend his vocabulary a little....)

And of course the highlight of the first day: seeing our gorgeous Houston family who had driven across to join us - the star of show:

Oh and of course going to John Besh's restaurant August wasn't too bad either. You can't go wrong with an amuse bouche of cavier, truffle and seafood foam.... followed by amazing crawfish tails with country ham foam, then Christian's favourite dish the spring onion soup with bacon croutons and peas, confit yellow fin tuna with chick peas,then rib eye steak with oyster bourdelaise, oysters and oyster mushrooms and a take a on affogato for dessert - all just lovely!!!

Somewhere east of Texas

Most things in Texas don't go past this quickly....

 

There's the lingering feeling that you didn't eat enough Tex Mex, see enough NBA or spend enough time driving enormous cars on the biggest roads you've ever seen. That your suitcase could possibly fit in another stack of tortillas, another bottle of rye whiskey or a few more purchases from Gilt.... 

We've done our time in honky tonk joints sipping on shiner bock and knocking back fritos while making robust comparisons with bierhalls in Bavaria - I mean let's be honest, Texas has twice the population of Bavaria, surely it's at least entitled to its own culture of bier-drinking and honky tonk hymn-singing.

We've gotten headaches from frozen margaritas by the river walk in San Antonio and accustomed ourselves to the idea of continential cuisine being ceviche rather than coq au vin. But, tired of wondering, everytime we run a kayak search, just why exactly anyone would actually want to fly to Athens, Georgia or Venice, Florida and whether Mobile, Alabama is actually a town chock-full of mobile homes, we've decided to hit the road in the US South and see whether we can't just get behind the notion of "the South" - so come on, y'all, and let's see how this pans out.