Day 3: New Orleans - Houma - Thibodaux - Napoleonville

Morning: Pick up your Rental Car. You can leave New Orleans by crossing the Mississippi River on either the Greater New Orleans Bridge or the Huey P. Long Bridge and follow Route 490 west for the 89km drive to Houma.

Nicknamed the "Venice of America" on account of its many waterways and bridges, the city of Houma is a shrimp-fishing and seafood-processing center. From here you can take boat excursions into the surrounding cypress swamps to see alligators and other wild creatures. Walk around the Historic District and see the porcelain birds and other fine exhibits at Southdown Plantation's Terrebonne Museum. Proceed along #24 north to Thibodaux.

The university city of Thibodaux is another community with fine 19th-century architecture. Here you should visit the Laurel Valley Village and Rural Life Museum, southeast of town on #308, where you will learn about life on a sugar plantation. Still in operation, the complex includes a schoolhouse, general store, boarding house and the remains of an old sugar mill.

Follow #308 north for another 34km to Napoleonville. The name was bestowed by a French settler who had fought under the "Little Colonel". Madewood Plantation is located 3km south of Napoleonville facing sleepy Bayou Lafourche. The plantation house, resembling a Greek temple, was designed in 1846 by Henry Howard, New Orleans' most prominent architect of the time. The furnishings reflect the elegant antebellum lifestyle and include an exquisite Meissen mirror, a Matthew Brady photograph of Gen. Robert E. Lee and an unsupported curved staircase. On the grounds are a large carriage house, a riverboat captain's home dating from 1822 and Elmfield Cottage. Madewood Plantation, "Queen of the Bayou" served as the site of the movie "A woman Called Moses", starring Cicely Tyson.

Your overnight rate at the plantation includes accommodation in antique-furnished bedroom, tour of house, wine and cheese in library before dinner, candlelight dinner with regional specialties and wine, coffee and brandy in parlor, and full breakfast.