with no wrong turns. What is most impressive is that the meal was really nice
as well. So rain clouds do have silver linings. The diner was called Louie's
café and was a 50s style place run by students. It was very cool and the
waitress let us put our own cream and chocolate sauce on our choc chip
pancake. She's the best mum ever! And probably half our age...
You know how some things never seem that bad when you look back on
them? Like power cuts or getting mouldy bread in a restaurant? Often people
even end up laughing about such experiences. Well, in spite of the previous
day's map-reading nightmare we left Baton Rouge and headed straight back
to the River Road.... once we could find it.
Having used the Lazy River leaflet for two days we were of the
considered opinion that it was the mapmaker who was lazy. Roads were often
not marked on the map and the 'sights' we were watching out for were seldom
clearly signposted in real life. The result was that we spent large chunks of
time lost and frustrated and missing out on many points of interest.
Fortunately we had a few distractions to keep us interested while we were
lost, without which we would probably have given up on the River Road and
hunted down the leaflet designer instead.
The first method of distraction was a Tootsie Roll. For those who don’t
know, this is a caramel and chocolate sweet, which we had heard about from
television programmes and been keen to try for ages. Although it sounds
innocuous it was actually foul. The caramel bit was ok, but the chocolate had
a grainy texture and a fusty taste - like a stale éclair without the cream. Live
and learn I suppose. In fact neither of us particularly like American chocolate -