All the rest

I have approximately a million other details that I want to share - I think I'm going to try to do this in a few shorter posts, rather than one gargantuan one.
I forgot to share about the City Diner, the diner that was in the parking lot of our hotel in New Orleans (well, technically, in a "suburb" of New Orleans called Metairie). The City Diner has the best food, and every single thing we ate there was bigger than my head. Sandwiches, hash browns, pancakes, everything. On Tuesday, we ate breakfast there, and Lauren got a chocolate chip pancake. She was trying to decide whether to have 1 or 2 pancakes, the waitress said, "They're pretty big - maybe you should just get one first, and then see."

That's the biggest pancake I've ever seen in my entire life. We think that we should nominate their diner for the show "Man Vs. Food", because you can order the pancakes in stacks of 1,3, or 5. We all ate Lauren's pancake, and we didn't even eat half of it. And it was delicious, probably the best pancake I've ever eaten.
We were sitting in a booth near the door, and people would walk in, and then do a full-body double-take when they saw her pancake.
Tuesday was the day we went to the cemeteries. One of my very favorite tombs had a beautiful blue stained glass window in the back of it, and a statue of a forlorn angel who has flung herself over a table/stone, with the blue light falling on her. It was heartbreaking. The tombs are like small houses, with ornate wrought-iron gates and urns full of flowers/plants, and statues and wreaths and ribbons. They were beautifully well-kept, obviously a priority to many families. Some of them had ornate designs of multi-colored marble and stone in front of them, made to look like carpets. And in some of the areas, the oldest areas, the facades were crumbling and we could see the old bricks underneath. On one of the tombs in Lafayette Cemetery, the bricks were broken, too, and we could look inside. Not that I could see anything but dirt and more crumbling bricks, but it took me a while to gather up the courage to look in at all.
Tuesday was also the day that we drove around through the Garden District and looked at all of the magnificent homes. One of the things that I was really struck by is how lush and extravagant the flowers and plants are. Everything is covered with azaleas and rhododendron. There are beds of pansies and violets everywhere, and palm trees (date palms, I think). It reminded me so much of going to Florida, where we were surrounded by lush greenery everywhere.
Tuesday was also the airboat tour day - my very favorite thing. Aside from the sheer pleasure of riding on the airboat, which would have been enough for me, we got to see interesting scenery and alligators and learn about the area.

Stevie, our guide, explained about the places where freshwater and salt water mix - he took us to different areas and showed us how the trees/plants change. Most of the swamp has cypress trees, with their spread-out roots in the water, but that's only in fresh water. In the area where the salt water joins in, the trees change and thin out, and there aren't alligators or as many fish - they don't like the brackish water. He also told us that the Disney Channel sent actors from "The Princess and the Frog" on an airboat tour from his company, and he showed us where they stopped to take promotional photos.

He also showed us orange trees with oranges growing, and he took us out onto Lake Salvator. He showed us how people set up cane poles in the water to catch catfish and come back to check them once a day.
One of Lauren's favorite vacation things is that we got to swim or at least put our feet in the pool at our hotels every night - outside pools. None of the hotels in Louisiana had indoor pools, but it was warm enough to swim outside.