Nawlins

Back in August of this year I spent a weekend in New Orleans chaperoning one of our summer student trips to the city. It was a really relaxed and enjoyable weekend as we took about fifteen students and had a really easy going group from Scotland, Australia, Japan and South Korea.

This was my third trip to the city so I decided to hop on board the tourism bus and sign myself up for a swamp tour. The tour was actually very good. I mainly wanted to see the scenery of the bayou, the trees and Spanish moss, more so than the alligators. While there were areas of the bayou that were largely untouched and many people still lived out alongside the water, in the back parts of the swamp there were leftover structures related to oil rigs and barges, not the sight you would hope to see but our guide did explain about this area to us. I'm also not entirely sure how I feel about the tours approaching the alligators, they feed them marshmallows, the remnants which float around in the bayou, and hot dogs! Alligators are passive creatures though so perhaps this doesn't bother them too much. Although I'm pretty sure they don't fancy being kissed every thirty minutes by our guide. He put on quite the performance and got a little cosy with one of the gators!

Anyway, here are some of my photos from the weekend. They're mainly of the tour but two are of the beautiful view we had from our hotel room downtown, looking out across the Mississippi River.

New Orleans, LA August 2013