SLOW START

On reflection, we had a slow start to the day.  We had decided to visit the new attraction, Whitney Plantation, which explains slavery.  It was back towards Baton Rouge, but it took two hours to drive there.

The walking tour took 90 minutes so we discarded our intention to visit another plantation, which still  a further 30 minutes further from New Orleans.

We did see some bridges today.  We didn't travel over this one but it suddenly loomed up above the cane fields.

This one we did cross.

This seemed to be a trestle bridge that had train tracks across it. It was next to the bridge we were on.

At the Whitney plantation, a lot of their research comes from a major job creating scheme of the Great Depression, The National Writers' Project.  Interviews were done with ordinary Americans nation-wide, so the only people who had been born slaves were children at the time of Emancipation. So the Museum aims to explain slavery through their stories.  Here are statues of children sitting in the back of a church.  The plantation didn't originally have a church, but this was the first African American church building which was relocated here.  

One of the original slave cabins.  Two families would have lived here.  At this plantation, the unusual practise was for the two cooks also to provide three meals a day, 6 days a week, for the 300 slaves, as well as cooking for the Big House.  Usually slaves got some food rations and had to prepare their own.  Slaves were encourages to grow their own food to supplement their diet.

They have the largest collection of these sugar kettles, which were nestled over a fire and have to be stirred continuously. Third degree burns were common,

These huge oaks were used as air conditioning for the main house.  For every window on this side of the house, there was a matching window on the opposite side of the house.

So here I am in New Orleans now, in our hotel, watching the amazing variety of commercial traffic on the Mississippi River.  And we can see another bridge!