the plantations...

Hello! Hello!

Today is all about my day plantation hopping. Just a short drive from New Orleans; Vacherie is where most plantations were back in the day, due to the proximity to the Mississippi River. My first stop was Laura Plantation which is a creole  plantation. 

Cool fact: the color of the main house seen above are the original, found after removing multiple layers; beautiful right? Below are some random photos of the tour, the guide was absolutely fabulous; his enthusiasm and passion for history was absolutely contagious, I really enjoyed the tour and highly recommend it 👍

Next up was Whitney Plantation. This one focuses on the lives of the enslaved, of course it's a must visit. When you purchase your tickets, you receive a small tag with a statue photo of an enslaved child and you download the app to do the self guided tour. Here is the walk towards the main house.

Here you can see two of the child statues found through out the plantation.

Now, the tag given at the beginning besides the statue photo it has that childs testimony from their memories and it is recorded at the library of congress which  I found very interesting.

Below is an example of the many cruel ways the owners would kill as punishment and inflict fear on the remaining slaves.

Unfortunately, half way through the tour we got rained on horrendously and even with a poncho and umbrella it was too bad and the hubby and I had to do a walk through and heard the rest of the tour in the car. 

We then went to Oak Alley Plantation. The rain thankfully, slowed down and we were able to see the place, even with our sneakers soaked and squeaking.  But look at that...

We did the inside tour, no photos allowed, boo! but it was nice, even with our guide wearing a face diaper and making it difficult to understand. But the scenery was gorgeous and did take more personal outdoor photos.

The last plantation we went to was Houmas House. This one was a little further at Darrow, but it was worth the drive. 

When we arrived, we were told a house tour was about to start in 10 minutes so we rushed ahead to go and ended up being the only two in the tour, so it was like a personalized tour. Our guide was super fun and made the tour very enjoyable; with fun quips and sarcastic jokes we had a blast. Here is the entrance photo, those walls were all hand painted, just amazing.

After the tour we saw the gardens, but another section was already closed, so we went ahead and ate at one of their 3 restaurants. I was so admiring the architectural details on the restaurant that I totally forgot to take a photo of it, but the place was beautiful. The food was amazing of course, they have a resident chef, of course of that I didn't forget to take the photo, what do you think?

That was fried egg plant with crab meat and a fancy sauce and it was exquisite 😋

I've linked the plantation websites for those that want more info; I personally enjoyed the history, the way these places are preserving the architecture and scenery/ nature to tell the history. But I must inject that no matter how many history books are read, past documents interpreted; we of this day and age will never understand, nor comprehend the way of life, the sentiments of that era. The slave and master; black and white relations of that point in time we will never comprehend. All we can do is learn of it, teach the future generations of it so we don't ever repeat it. And while I write this, I must share my thoughts... I see not only this great country but the world going down a similar path from the past. We are being manipulated in mass, our press, our leaders have crossed and keep crossing a threshold that is against the people. We have allowed our freedoms to be infringed on, we are pushing for and allowing medical tyranny, we are advocating for second class citizenship. We are not reacting to mass censorship, invasion of privacy, we are not informing ourselves and unfortunately if things continue in this matter things that happened in the past will be nothing to what will happened to us. 

Anyway, just some food for though. The next vacation post will be of.....the garden district, so stay tuned and have a great day.