Mobile to New Orleans (Saturday 25th February)

[This duplicates some of the last post]

Drove into Mobile and parked in the lot at Fort Conde, in downtown Mobile.  We went to the Welcome Centre there.  Someone at the Shady Acres campground had suggested that the best way to get to look around downtown mobile was to use the free shuttle buses (Wave) that do a circuit there – the stops are marked by blue umbrellas.


We got off the bus at Dauphin Street and had coffee at Serda's, 'the best coffee shop in town'.  Mobile was very quiet – lots of evidence of Mardi Gras – decorated houses and balconies, beads and ribbons in trees, and draped over lamp-posts and fire hydrants.


Decided to visit the African-American Heritage Museum, which was a little off the beaten track.  One of the staff in the Welcome Centre had given us a leaflet and it was supposed to be open, but wasn't.


Back to downtown and lunch at Winzell's Oyster House ('fried, stewed and nude') where we both had fried oysters – Anna with salad, Paul in a Po'Boy (his first Po'Boy).


A Po'Boy is a southern sandwich – half a baguette stuffed with fish or meat and sometimes salad, often served with fries.


Got bus back to Welcome Centre where Paul had to walk very fast (he says it wasn't 'the runs') to get to the toilet ('just one fall of soot and it was done,' he says).


We paid a brief visit to the Mobile Museum but it cost $5 each to get in and it was a large building and Paul didn't think we had time to look around :(


Back to RV, leaving Mobile on the I10 west towards New Orleans.  We stopped at the Welcome Center just over the Mississippi border and – at last – got a better, larger-scale map than the one we'd been using.  This was our first free state map – we missed the Welcome Center when crossing from Georgia into Alabama.  We also got a complementary cup of coffee and a Mississippi badge and lots of leaflets.  The Center was staffed by woman in her forties with red-pink hair and an older man.  They were very helpful.


60 miles further on the I10 west we reached the Louisiana border and another Welcome Center – another free state map, more leaflets and another badge!  Woman working there gave us very good directions to the |New Orleans West camp-site ('you've done this before, I can tell, ' said Paul).  We followed them to the letter!  Part of the route took us over the Lake Pontchartrain Bridge which went on and on for quite a while it's at least 15 miles long [check this].


Having found the site and booked in we went down the road a way to the Breaux Mart to buy some food to cook.