Friday 27th Sept. - 'Shadows on the Teche'

 

Last night we made arrangements with Jim and Katherine that we would go into New Iberia and do the tour of "Shadows on the Teche'....

First though, we would go to lunch at Victor's Cafeteria. Warren and I had passed this interesting looking (from the outside) place a couple of times when walking up and down West Main Street in New Iberia. According to Katherine, this place is famous, locally, and she wanted us to eat the 'local' food there.

we had trouble finding parking in the main street as everything was being set up for the Sugar Cane Festival which started on Wednesday with the choosing of the royal court for the parade. The parade of the adults is on Sunday, but the children's parade is on Saturday.

We had also packed everything up ready for a picnic on the banks of the Teche somewhere to watch the flotilla of boats up the Bayou into the city docks.

The day dawned clear and lovely, and so we put all our sunscreen, hats etc in our bags and took off around 11.30am for the parking lot here in Delcambre. We were to drop our rental car off at Enterprise on the way into town, after filling up with gas. We met J and K there and transferred all our goodies into their Suburban for the ride into town.

As I said, parking was a problem until it was suggested that we seek approval to park in the lot of the Information center, which Katherine ascertained was just fine. We parked and walked the short distance to Victor's.

This old time dining room is cafeteria style where you take a tray and walk along the bain maries and choose your hot foot etc. The staff were difficult to understand, such were their thick Louisiana accents (or cajun/creole??), but we made our selections.

Katherine had suggested that the servings were so huge we would eat half there and take the rest for a picnic dinner when we were watching the boats on the Teche. Well, our food wasnt that huge...I ordered 9 fried shrimp, and Waz got two pieces of chicken (he saved one) plus some Corn (local style which is yummy) and a small (the serving was very small) cajun spiced fries, along with a VERY small salad.

The food was nothing special, in fact, nothing much at all....but the idea of eating there was fun, and the trip to the bathroom out back was the highlight of the adventure.

We walked back to the information center and were glad of the cool in there.

We got our tickets to the Mansion tour, and Katherine decided to stay in the center, as she had done the tour several times. Jim hadnt see inside the house before, so he accompanied us on the tour.

 

 

Along with our tour guide, we entered the property from the Main Street, side gate.

There were several similar statues on the walk from the gate to the house.

 We began the tour on the ground floor and went straight into the Parlor. It is appropriate to note here that the home had been built in 1831 by the Weeks Family as their wealth grew from their Sugar Plantation. They lived close by while this home was being built for them. All the 1/4 of a million bricks were made by hand from clay taken from the property.
All the rooms lead into each other with there being no hallway at all. This makes excellent sense when you conside the summer heat and the need for the windows and doors to be open to allow for any breezes to flow through the house.
After the ground floor tour, we took the rather deep steps up to the first floor veranda.

These columns face the road. I guess this is typical of Antebellum homes in that the facade is usually pillored with wide verandas. It makes good sense, when you see that this photo was taken about 1.30pm, so the sun is taking up most of the space.

I could probably have put my hammock up here and and napped in the cool breeze.

The up stairs rooms were mostly the bedrooms with a small sitting room off the master bedroom, overlooking the Teche. The main sitting room was next door and opened onto the upstairs loggia looking towards the Bayou. That room is top center in the photo below with the white doors.

this view of the house is th back one overlooking the Bayou.The stairs at the bottom left lead to the upstairs loggia, there being no internal staircases.

Standing on the upstairs loggia balcony, this view extends to the Gazebo overlooking the Teche. Note the Spanish Moss dripping from the Live Oak tree. the trees are stunning old ones and they are all dripping in moss. I think this is one of the lovely things about the deep south: the lushness of the foliage and the huge old trees everywhere.

 

I might mention that Warren and I were pretty tuckered out by Friday...We had spent the whole week driving and sight seeing and it was hard to keep our eyes open at times. We were grateful that Jim was driving, which gave us a break from driving and navigating.

We heard that the flotilla wasnt going to be specatulat this year, so made the executive decision not to stay until 6.30pm for that event coming up the water. We were just too tired to wait around in the heat.

After the house tour, we jumped back in the Suburban and headed for home.

Our toungues were hanging out for a cup of tea....as they usually are. The humidity level was much lower, so it was drier, and we found ourselves a bit dehydrated.

 

Getting back to the boat was most welcome and we veged for the rest of the day.

A lovely sunset was the end to a gloriously sunny day.