TRAVELIN' ON THE C-SPAN SCHOOL BUS: BATON ROUGE, LA TO AUSTIN, TX
If you work at C-SPAN, you have an opportunity to volunteer to travel around a week with the Bus. Basically, the Bus goes around to schools and other places like that to teach people a little about the difference between C-SPAN and ordinary news broadcasts, and a little about television production. Here's a peek at the week I spent travelling around with Heidi Seiffert, Joe Teeples, and Sean McCann, along with travel tips should you ever get to these places..
Days 1 and 2: Baton Rouge, LA
The first thing you'll notice when driving through town is that daquiris seem to be quite popular. Most of the restaurants have the word "daquiri" in their name. There's even a drive through daquiri shop, if you can believe that. And yes, Louisiana does have drunk driving laws, so I can't figure that one out either. From what I could tell, there's really not much touristy stuff to do in Baton Rouge besides the casinos, so I wouldn't plan an entire vacation around it, but if you're going to be in the New Orleans area, it might be worth the drive just to soak up some local flavor.
RESTAURANTS If you're not going to eat cajun food while you're in Louisiana, what the heck are you there for??!! One thing I did notice is that none of the dessert menus had anything chocolate on them. What gives? I guess they don't like chocolate there. One must try in the way of local food is what the folks there call "po boys". They're very much like what's called a "hero" or a "sub" in other parts of the country, except with a cajun touch. Be careful what you ask for on it, though: they laughed when one of our group asked for chicken on her po boy! Nobody knew why, but there wasn't any such thing as one with chicken on it! Strange, but true. Mulate's Cajun all the way! Live music and cajun dancing was the highlight of our visit here. Although you wouldn't know it from looking at it, this is actually a chain restaurant. The decor is really rustic-it looks like a huge joint right off of the bayou. The food is great and they give generous portions. My entree was catfish with a shrimp etoufee sauce. Yummy. Ralph and Kacoo's More cajun specialties. I tasted my first alligator here. Believe it or not, it really does taste like chicken! Here, my entree was green pepper stuffed with a crawfish/crab stuffing. Juban's I didn't go to this one, but my friends had been there the night before I arrived in Louisiana. They highly recommend the cajun food here.
RIVERBOAT CASINOS There's only 2 of 'em in Baton Rouge. Belle of Baton Rouge A permanently docked riverboat with gambling 24 hours a day. If you're used to gamboling at Las Vegas or Atlantic City, the Belle is kind of a downer. It's not really opulently decorated, and there's nothing to do besides gambol. Casino Rouge I didn't get a chance to go to this one, mainly because there was no way of knowing if it would be there. Unlike the Belle of Baton Rouge, this one actually sails 4 times a day down the Mississippi for a couple of hours.
OTHER STUFF TO SEE Louisiana State University University of Southwestern Louisiana Home of the "Ragin' Cajuns".
Day 3: St. Martinville, LA
This is a really super small town, not really a destination for tourists. The highlight of our stop here was staying overnight at a real plantation home. The home is in the center of a sugar plantation and right next to a sugar refinery. This was a private home (not a bed and breakfast, so don't try to call and make reservations-they'll just laugh at you) owned by the Levert family, who were so gracious as to invite the bus crew to be their guests for the night.
We all had great fun here, exploring the house and picking our own bedrooms out, lounging in the living room, going up to the widow's walk (a place on the roof of the house where you can get a great view of the land and the sugar mill), and eating fantastic southern home cooking, made by the 2 ladies that work there. The one lady's name was Dotty (pronounced Dah-tee), but darn it, I can't remember the other lady's name.
In the morning, we took a tour of the sugar mill. Cool! Did you know that sugar isn't made from the cane itself, but from the juice that is pressed out of it? This mill doesn't take the sugar all the way to white, only to a light brown stage, which goes to other places to get finished. It was neat to taste the warm sugar coming out of the final drying stage. I'll add pictures of all of this stuff as soon as I can.
Day 4: Houston, TX
I didn't get to see much here. We stopped at a senior citizens rec center to make our presentations today, which was a fun change of pace.
Day 5, 6 and 7: Austin, TX
RESTAURANTS The majority of the eats in Austin are either Tex-Mex or places that specialize in chicken and ribs. Unlike Louisiana restaurants, Texas restaurants have a better selection of desserts that have chocolate in them. Fonda San Miguel A little out of the way place with fantastic Tex-Mex. I got into kind of a rut, because I ordered a stuffed pepper (forgot about the one earlier in the week), but this was a stuffed chili pepper, with chicken and rice. Z Tejas Grill More good tex-mex. Oasis This is also a restaurant, but we only went here for drinks. It was recommended by Sean as the best place in Texas to see the sun set, and he was right. The view is fantastic. The County Line After the sun set at Oasis, we went here for dinner. If you love ribs, this is the place for you. Sure, they've got other stuff right off the grill, too, but the ribs are fantastic. Served with just about anything you order are homemade baked beans and coleslaw. I ordered a full rack of baby-back ribs at $14.95 and it was well worth it.
SIGHTSEEING The Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Library and Museum I've never been to a presidential library before, so this was a neat experience. The museum traces the life of LBJ, with lots of video, pictures, and artifacts, including one of his presidential limousines. You can also see all of the papers and stuff from his presidency which is quite impressive when seen all together in the library. Sixth Street A lot of odd shops and saloons with live music. In this area is Austin's capitol building. Did you know that their capitol was purposely built taller than the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.? They did it because, as the old saying goes, everything's bigger in Texas!
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