Eating Alligator

Tried this at Don's seafood when i was on a official trip to Lafayette.

Driving experiences in Louisiana - USA

Driving in USA was much different from driving in Canada But mostly that earlier experience made me feel more confident about my driving.

Getting driving license from Louisiana (where i am living now) was hassle free. With our indian driving experience lets us get american driving license easily. All we have to do is first clear a written test and then take a drive test. thats it we get a license with no restrictions.



Previous driving experience in any country counts specially international driving permit. Indian or any other country driving license will also do.

Canada and US driving rules are mostly same. Biggest difference is all the numbers are in miles in USA and Canada and most of the world uses Kilometers.
Its cautiously driving for a few days is whats important and eventually you will get used to it.

A recent scary incident.

Recently tried my hand on a 12 seater van while driving to Miami. At first it all seemed same as a car, real trouble started when i was overtaking a huge lorry at 70+ miles an hour speed. It could be just one of the defective van steering that we hired or may be all of them are like that. You need to constantly keep adjusting the steering wheel to keep it accurately on the road where you want. I was overtaking the lorry in on a bent road and hardly had enough room to. Van was shaking and i was literally scared & scared everyone to before taking good control of it. Also it always rained when i drove, which made it all more difficult to drive.



You can checkout this van and all other cars i drove on my wikipedia page of My & the cars i drove But soon i was one of the very confident drivers who drove that van in the night at 75+ miles constantly for hours together crossing 4 US states Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Diving had never been so pleasurable, I love US highways.

Crossing worlds longest bridge - Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is the longest bridge in the world. Its built on lake Pontchartrain thats between New Orleans(South shore) and covington(North shore).

Some facts

spanning 23.9 miles from Metairie on the South Shore.

Speed limit 70 miles per hour.



We did not notice the first time we crossed it in the midnight. But now its a feast to the eyes every time we cross it. At the same time its a bridge where we have to drive very carefully as only 2 high speed lanes are the on each side.

Mardi gras 2009 @ Slidell, Metairie, Covington, Mandeville, New Orleans - Louisiana

Although Mardi gras is celebrated worldwide in various forms, Louisiana is famous (and notorious!!) for Mardi gras carnival.



Fun part of this carnival is lots of beads, soft toys, plastic glasses are thrown from the floats. Families with kids await eagerly for this carnival and come prepared with huge bags and ladders. Kids sit on those ladders along the roads(path of the floats). They catch everything thrown at them and almost fill multiple bags of beads and other stuff collected.

This take place for almost two weeks and almost everyday some part of Louisiana will have some mardi gras celebration.
We attended Mardi gras in Slidell, Mandeville and Metairie.

Bubbles at Gymboree on Inika's birthday.

Rishab attended Inika's birthday in Gymboree at Mandeville. As a part of games organized, bubbles were blown all over the place.

All games were for kids below 5 years and they had a blast.