Today was our James Lee Burke day.

We started our day with a drive to the New Iberia Harbor. Even though we are a long way from the Gulf of Mexico, small boats do come up this far, mostly shrimpers and oil barges.

 

 After our harbor tour we did the James Lee Burke walking tour of downtown New Iberia. If you are not a fan of James Lee Burke or aware of who he is you might check the internet for more info.

James Lee Burke is a writer of Cajun country police stories that center in New Iberia and use the local buildings, coffee shops, police station, etc as back ground for his stories. Most of his books center around Bayou Teche, the local waterway that goes through town. Teche is the native word for “snake” which is exactly what the Teche looks like on a map.

 Budd at Bayou Teche.

This is the location of fish camp and bait shop in Burke's books.

A small fireplug for small fires maybe?

All the oak trees are hanging with moss.

The walking tour centers on Main Street which is exactly where we were last night for the Mardi Gras Parade. While walking along, Budd and I noticed lots of beads from last night lying in the gutters, in the flower beds and hanging from the trees. We collected many of those as we walked along. Some ladies in a coffee shop were laughing at us tourists and I can only imagine the conversation.

A bead tree?

We dropped the beads off at the truck and walked back to the coffee shop for a lunch of bean soup and a bowl gumbo along with home made root beer.

Budd decided we needed a King Cake for an authentic Mardi Gras dessert for tonight so we went to Fermin's to get the cake. They had lots of cake with many different fillings.

 Food and what?

 

King cake is supposed to have a small plastic baby baked inside it. The person who gets the baby in his piece of cake gets to buy the next one. Ours had the baby on the side not in the cake for sanitary reasons. The cake looks and tastes much like a cinnamon roll.