[2015 New Orleans] Happy Easter Sunday! Let's go on a swamp tour!

It's Easter today. I thought I'd planned it quite well: go for a jazz brunch by Jackson Square, and we'd finish just in time for the second Easter parade. Yes, New Orleans takes Easter Sunday very seriously, with 3 parades! Maybe that's why the square was packed with people in formal attire and beautiful hats.

Today's Jazz brunch location, Muriel, offers a prix-fixe 3 course brunch menu for Easter Sunday. We both decided to start with the goat cheese crepes, just because we saw "crawfish sauce". It was a leap of faith for me as I'm not a big fan of goat cheese. But the waiter assured me: Even people who don't like goat cheese like this dish.

Well I sure loved the sauce and tender pieces of crawfish. It even came with one in the shell as garnish. I happily peeled it, then got grossed out by the mudline on its back. While the server was spot on about the mildness of the goat cheese, in the end this dish was a bit too heavy as an appetizer.

D ordered crawfish cake eggs benedict, keeping my fork out of this took a lot of restraint...

Probably because I didn't really like my duck confit hash. Yes it was tasty, but it was also a bit greasy and too much potatoes.

D ordered the coconut cake roll, sweet, summer-like and served cold.

My bad habit of "must go for famous dish" almost killed me this time. This freshly baked bread pudding sure was delicious, but it was so heavy my stomach refused further food intake about halfway through.

Who knew the balcony was so adorable? Even though it wasn't very high, it was still nice to avoid the crowds on street level. If I wasn't feeling unwell, I'd totally get a drink and while away an afternoon here. But I ended up heading back to the hotel for a rest, and the only thing I saw that was Easter-related were the three elaborate hats these ladies wore in the bottom right.

After a good rest, it was about time to be picked up for our swamp tour this afternoon. After some careful research, I decided to go with a well-known company Cajun Pride. Most swamp tours have two options: drive to the swamps yourself or opt for hotel pick-up. The second option is of course more expensive, but I didn't want to deal with the hassle of renting/parking a car, especially in historic cities like New Orleans with tiny streets. There were a few complaints on Tripadvisor about missed pick-ups, so I was very nervous and even called ahead to confirm the pick-up time. Thirty minutes after our pick-up time, I got a call from the company asking us to walk away from the French quarter because they didn't expect the streets to close to early for the parade. Really?! It's not like this is the first year they're doing this on Easter Sunday and why didn't they tell me this when I called 40minutes ago?! Thankfully D was a lot more laid back and stopped me from having an aneurysm on the way to the new pick-up point. We boarded the bus without further drama.

Forty minutes later we arrived at the swamps, and were immediately told to board the boat, with no time to make a quick pit stop. What?! I hope the alligators won't mind...wait? huh?

As we set out on the boat, it started raining. I'm so glad I took D's advice and changed into my jeans, because despite the shabby appearance, these boats can run FAST, and it really started to get cold...and wet....*brrrrrr*.....

 Despite the weather, the swamps are actually quite scenic. I loved how green it looked. The gray stuff hanging off the trees are Spanish Moss, since there's abundant supply, people used to stuff it in their pillows instead of the more expensive cotton, until they realize these things were crawling with bugs...ewwww

 We were all starting to get rather restless and the captain kept on apologizing about how animals don't like rain. All of a sudden we saw another boat parked near the bushes with all of their passengers on one side. Our captain quickly steered our boat next to them. Turns out it's this little guy. Captain says the best way to gauge an alligator's size is to take the length of its snout to the eyes and convert it from inches to feet. Which means this little fellow is about 6 ft...(maybe not so little after all?)

If you're wondering about the white thing by its mouth, that's marshmallow. Yep, if you're going to the swamps, don't forget to bring a bag of marshmallows!

Though sometimes they like a little savory too.

 The tree above is reportedly the oldest in the entire swamp. See those trees with exposed roots in the bottom picture? This is caused by foraging wild boars. Since we didn't see any, the captain decided to call for them. Just as we thought he was gonna start snorting like a pig, he yelled: Come out, Pig Pig! Maybe they're not so wild after all?

Yep, definitely not very wild. Because we were soon surrounded by pigs begging for marshmallows.

 There were even some piglets, which elicited a lot of 'awwwwww's. As we were leaving, two more boats steered into this spot. Pretty sure these pigs are gonna get sugar high tonight.

 Wild iris, one of my favorite scents.

 Some of the houses are built right on the water. It must be tough living like this. I noticed a lot of the equipment were rusty and old. But they sure still have their sense of humor. The bottom left has a message under the alligator sign: I love tourists! They taste great! The one on the right said: It's not krooked, you r drunk!

When we got back on solid ground, it was getting dark. By the time we returned to the city, it was almost 9, so we decided to grab dinner close by. Despite the late hour, the two more famous oyster houses still had a line out the door and I was starving, so into Bourbon House we went.

Since we were sitting at the oyster bar watching the shuckers in action, there's no reason not to get any. We started with half a dozen raw and half a dozen grilled. The shucker in front us was also from Chicago, and gave us one extra coz of the connection :) These were harvested from Area 13 the day before. Even though they weren't huge, the freshness and flavor was the best we've had during this trip! If they didn't close down right after our order, we'd have gladly ordered lots more!

 

 

 There's a map showing the various areas where oysters are harvested around New Orleans.

The grilled ones were amazing too! It wasn't drowned in sauce like the last one and you can still taste the oysters.

Since it was freezing on the boat and still drizzling outside, gumbo seemed like a great idea. This was my favorite on the trip as well.

D got the crab cake, which had a good balance of sweet crab meat to cake. I opted for BBQ shrimp, which is nothing like traditional BBQ, it's more like a butter sauce. The shrimps were fantastic, but can't we get more bread to soak up the rich sauce?

We ended with strawberry cheesecake and pecan pie, perfect endings to a lovely meal. Starting to really like NOLA, it seems you can just walk into any restaurant and have a good meal!