June 24, 2008

•  So, here's some lagniappe, my "thrown in for good measure" sight seeing. We begin with a trip on Sat. to the capitol of Louisiana, or as my friend John puts it: "Where corruption began" .  Let me preface this bit with the information that we were headed to Baton Rouge to the Mall of Louisiana to ride the carousel and do a bit of window shopping and just have a nice day out. So my friend John says, "How bout a quick jaunt over to the capitol building", actually what he said was the "New" capitol building. Louisiana "New" is very different from Florida New.  Let's put it this way, the high school I attended and graduated from in 1992 (which didn't get air conditioning until 1995) updated by re-painting the exterior of the school. That's it. In Florida, new means: "we just built this". In LA new means: "this building is 200 years old and we freshly painted it, your welcome"

  So anyway, we all pile out of the van and see this:

  And here's John w/ some of the kids:

  I call this shot, "Justice with a headache" I've no idea what it really is though:

  The ceiling in the foyer:

  

  We glanced at the chambers and were told by a staff member that if we looked straight up we could see a pencil embedded in the ceiling from a bomb blast in the early 1970's.  It was there. He didn't say why they didn't have a brass plaque mounted with this fascinating bit of info. either.

  Next, we got on the elevator and went up like 20 floors, got off and squeezed onto a small elevator which went up the remaining floors. The good news is, there is a gift shop to hang out in at the top, for those of us who have a problem with heights.  Here's some pics. from the look out:

   

  You can see the rain in the distance.

  

  We went back down and got a quick shot of the governors private elevator:

  which is right next to the bullet holes in the marble walls from the assassination attempt on Huey P. Long. Here's a blurry picture of part of the Long display down the hall on the left as well.:

   

  Hannah then informed us that she didn't like this mall at all. Especially the pictures of the bloody guy (Huey P.) So, we piled all the kids into the van and headed for the fun mall. Here's Hoppy and John w/ his son on the carousel:

   

  Afterwards, we went out to dinner at Cracker Barrel and had a very silly time of it. It started with a very mature woman who told us that the next time she felt up to getting the kids menu's, she'd get us some, before toddling off. We did fine till I saw Elena dismantling her menu...she pulled off the specials sheet that was stapled on, which invited a lecture on what something stapled meant: ie: it belonged there!! Then we see that on those Cracker Barrel old fashioned brown paper menu's she had drawn a smiley face on a picture of mashed potatoes. Which started another lecture on not coloring the menus...she had herself all confused! We laughed heartily over Lanies "happy" potatoes..someone somewhere is gonna get that menu and ask for the Happy Potatoes and not be happy when they get plain old mashies.

  Boredome was setting in:

   

  

  Here's our really nice and patient waiter, he was also very efficient, we were well pleased:

  

  He really liked the happy potatoes and even told us how he was partially responsible for the invention of strawberry lemonade. Wow! Almost on par with Al Gore huh?! Just teasing...we really liked our waiter.

  So, that's it for now, it's really late, or early depending on your point of view and we're in a hotel in Tennessee on our way to Mammoth caves in KY. Have a great evening/day/thingy!

  ~Kate

  • 12:13 am
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