Alligators, & Osprey, & Beignets Oh My!

Day 4: Saturday, August 1, 2009 by Zac G. & Sydney P.

            Today we went for a tour of downtown New Orleans and a swamp boat tour where we saw alligators.  We woke up at 7 o’clock before we headed out for the swamp boat tour.  After getting lost trying to find the Swamp tour, we finally reached it and then we split up into two different boats for individual adventures!  We saw alligators from 4 feet to 10 feet long.  Instead of doing the sane thing, we actually wanted the alligators to come closer to us.  So we fed them marshmallows!  We also saw Osprey, Blue herons, salamanders, egrets, newts, and turtles.  And of course we had to have seen the local Mosquito-hawks, aka Dragonflies.  Then we got back in the van and headed for Downtown New Orleans for lunch and sightseeing.  To get to the restaurant, we had to park in the 10^th floor of the parking garage since there is nowhere to park on the street.  Since we had so many people, it was difficult to fit everyone in one elevator so we took turns going down.  Almost every elevator was full so we had to wait at least half an hour before getting to the ground floor.  Somehow we all got to the bottom before the end of the day.  Before we went to lunch at a delicious Cajun restaurant, we got to eat Beignets (that's Ben-yay: a kind of French doughnut) while waiting in line for forty minutes.  We had Jambalaya and amazingly yummy Gulf coast shrimp and got to do some bonding with people that we don’t really know.  After we had that brand new experience, we were lead around town by Malik Muhammad, one of Rob James’ college roommates.  From there we split up into smaller groups and went to take in the atmosphere of New Orleans.  And of course we did a little shopping.  On the way back, our car had one extra person so we really had to squeeze, Rob and Tori had to share a seat belt which didn’t really work too well.  Rob ended up on half the seat and Tori couldn’t use her arms.  Finally after all the excitement, we got back and were able to get showers (yay!) and just chill out.

- Zac G. & Sydney P.