Taking it slow in Louisiana

We're spending tonight in a little cabin (http://www.bayoucabins.com/) on the bayou in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana (about 15km east of Lafayette). We've just had fried catfish, grilled shrimp, jambalaya and succulent pecan pie for dinner, and watched a couple of enthusiastic locals do the two step to some serious 'country' music.

Louisiana is lovely - calm, slow, a little ramshackle, dignified, graceful. Despite being neighbours, it's a far cry from Texas where we spent the last two days.

It was fun to be in Texas - mainly because of all the stereotypes we know so well and it's a place neither of us ever thought we'd visit. It isn't the most inspiring place we've seen. Amusing to be greeted with Howdy's and Y'all's wherever we went!

In Fort Worth we ate serious meat in the Stockyards and wandered past stores selling every conceivable size, style, colour of stetson and cowboy boot. In Dallas we visited the 6th Floor Museum in what used to be the Texas School Book Depository. It is not often that you get to stand in a place where history was made (perhaps Ground Zero is another example), imagine it playing out in front of you and wonder how, even in the smallest of ways, the world might be a different place if events had worked out differently.

Tomorrow we'll meander further south through Cajun country. Arrive in New Orleans on Sunday.