Plantation Life, More Bourbon Street and The Family (Day 4)

On Friday morning, I took it slow.  I had done around 1500 miles of driving in the last 3 days and it felt good to be in a hotel and not the car.

Instead of seeing the sites in New Orleans, I decided I wanted to head out of the city and visit a plantation. The one I chose was Oak Alley Plantation, located about an hour west of New Orleans.

Drive to Oak Alley Plantation was pretty uneventful. As I arrived, I walked up to the ticket booth and purchased a ticket to tour the grounds. The ticket I got included a tour of the big house.  With an AAA discount, the cost was $25.00.

The whole plantation was beautiful.  They have an exhibit on the slave housing and what it was like to live and work on the plantation. 

They also had several gardens you could walk around, as well as explorer the giant oak trees on the property. 

The tour of the big house was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about plantation from the tour guide.  You could not take pictures inside the house, but it was beautiful and amazing, trust me!

As impressive as the big house was, the most impressive thing about this planation was the giant oak trees on site.  They were so big and beautiful, standing tall at over 200 years old.  

I know the plantation is a little bit of a ride outside of New Orleans, so if you do not have a car, it might be hard to reach, but it is worth the visit.  Some of the tour groups in New Orleans like Gray Line do have bus tours to visit the plantation as I saw a few groups show up there for tours.  

After returning to the hotel from the plantation, I got ready to grab dinner and head out on Bourbon Street.  My family was coming to town, so I couldn't get too crazy.

It was fun though because I got to meet up with a college friend and his wife who were in town for an ultimate frisbee competition. It was fun taking them up and down Bourbon Street and telling them about the different bars and shops, as they had never been there before.  

Bourbon Street was a little more lively as it was a Friday night.  They had a lot more people there as compared to Thursday night.  Plus we got to see a parade getting ready to leave and some people throwing beads from a balcony.  

Unfortunately, it had to be an early night as I had to get back to the hotel by 10:30 p.m. to get the car and head over to the airport to pick up my family. They arrived just after 11:00 p.m.

I will say, the one thing that was crazy at the airport was the Uber/Taxi pickup line.  There must have been 1,000 people in line at 11:00pm.  I'm so glad I did not stay down on Bourbon Street and ask the family to Uber to the hotel.  They would have killed me.  

After picking the family up, we headed back to the hotel and called it a night. I went to bed excited to show my daughters around New Orleans the next morning.