Our first full day in Baton Rouge ("Red Stick", BaRou).
We toured around Baton Rouge, seeing the new and old capitol buildings (at least from the street), parts of LSU, and Lake Shore drive, a very beautiful part of the city. After coffee and beignets at Coffee Call, we drove a short distance to the LSU Rural Life Museum, a large collection of buildings and equipment culled from pioneer farms and from plantations all around Louisiana. We spent a brisk afternoon wandering around their extensive grounds: shacks and sheds, steam tractors like my grandfather built, rococo gardens with statues from Europe, slaves quarters, a tiny chapel with tinted glass and hand-painted symbols.
A rainy day, coffee and beignets again, and a few hours at the Louisiana State Museum. This is a incredible museum, well worth seeing, do not miss it if you're visiting the state. There are really amazing sections dedicated to Mardi Gras, to the many outstanding musicians of the region (the ones that were new to me and really stood out: Professor Longhair and Guitar Slim), to Cajun culture, Huey Long, and to each geographical/cultural region of the state. Several photos from that day are shown below.
The Mardi Gras section was a revelation. I had no idea how widespread the tradition was throughout the cities and towns of Louisiana, of the days (even weeks) of parades in New Orleans, about "superkrewes", or the long and illustrious history of the traditional krewes. Still, the coolest thing to me are the Mardi Gras Indians.
