Tony and I made a trip to the US for Tony's Nephew's wedding. This was my first trip back in over a year. It is a long trip to Louisiana as we had to take the tube to the train to the airport, then we fly 10.5 hours to Dallas, then transfer to a smaller train to make the final 1.5 hour flight to Lafayette. We knew going into it that it was going to be a long day.
US customs was a no-nonsense place that didn't fully appreciate my enthusiasm for being back home. Oh well. Upon clearing inspection, we headed directly to Chillis for a well deserved Margarita.
We bought the top of the line Margarita, for what a bottom of the line slushy would have cost back in the UK. And boy was it good.
It was great to be back on American soil and see signs of America all over the place. Even if it was only Texas. . .
We crashed out as soon as we got to Johnathan's (Tony's old roommate) house. The next morning we woke up a little jetlagged, but nothing that a Meche's Donut or two wouldn't fix.
We hopped in the car (what a treat) and popped over to Meche's and picked up a box of donuts. In no time, we were in the land of American-sized doughy sugary greasy goodness. Yummy!
For lunch that day, we made our way out to Cecelia, where Tony is from originally, to visit his family. They live right off a small bayou in a town with only 1 stoplight and a Piggly Wiggly.
We ate at Poche's Meat Market, a slaughter house and local institution, where on Sundays they have a BBQ lunch. I had the BBQ chicken, and Tony and his father had the Crawfish Etoufee.
The portions were proper American sized and enormous. It felt so good to be back where it was warm and sunny and homey. Not that London isn't any of those things, but . . .
The Cajun culture is very centered around their amazing food and family. It was so nice to see Tony reunited with his father and his nephews. I know he misses them in London, and he looked so very happy being with them again.
Tony also got a chance to ride his nephew's motorcycle, something else that Tony really misses from Los Angeles, where he was using a motorcycle to commute to work.
One interesting observation after being in a society that doesn't use cars that much and when they do use cars, they are the small compact cars, was just how many TRUCKS (and I mean big TRUCKS) are used in South Louisiana. Tony's immediate family has 3 trucks and one sedan, whereas, I think only 1 person in our London building owns a car.
For dinner that night, Tony and I met up with some of his old Band friends. We met at a cute Wine/Beer Bar with 100 beers on tap.
It was fun to meet some of these friends that go back some 20 years with Tony. He was having a great time sharing memories with them of their glory days in band.
Yes they may be in their 50s, but they still acted like teenagers when they were reunited.
We then wandered across the street to this burger joint called, The Burger Smith, where we had a fantastic American Burger. It was dripping in sauce, and came with a huge portion of fries. All for $6. That's about 4 GBP. The same burger with fries in a pub would run you about 8 GBP, or about $12. Amazing!
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