My husband writes for, and owns, Dixiedining.com (and www.dixiedining.wordpress.com) so it’s not unusual for the family to load up in the car and take a road trip, weekend or day-long, to look for good local food.  We haven’t been to Louisiana for a while so it was only convenient for us to tie in a family fun trip with some Dixie dining.

The travelling Star Wars exhibit opened last week in Lafayette and since our boys are Star Wars fanatics we decided to check it out.  The museum is small but fit a lot of goodies inside.  We arrived at a great time: between the scheduled school field trips for that day and the after-school crowd so we had the museum almost to ourselves.  Starting point was the Millenium Falcon ride…very cool, and worth the extra expense.  Then we saw a robotics show featuring C3PO.  Then off to the exhibits.  Some of the items on display were actual props from the movies.  There were models and miniatures as well.  Costumes gave us a real idea of the size of some of the characters and how small someone had to be to fit inside the R2D2 costume.

The exhibit also featured Star Wars’ impact on robotics, medicine, and technology.  There was  a hands-on gallery where you could make robots and manipulate them to move with magnets and balance. 

The trip was fascinating and took about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to complete, without the crowds around us.

Next came the dining part of the trip.  You can read about it this week by going to www.dixiedining.wordpress.com. 

Our trip home took us on a Plantation adventure as we wove through Louisiana towns along the famous River Road.  There were plenty of these homes to see and plenty of sugar cane country side in between them.  The only one we really stopped for was Oak Alley where we took a tour.  The inside of the house was beautiful but I liked the grounds, with their gardens and trees, better.  It was a great tour and I highly recommend it.  If you have the time, which we didn’t, I suggest stopping at a few of them.  Of course it will cost you for the tours, but I think it would be fun.

We stopped in New Orleans for a late lunch.  Central Grocery was closed and the boys were sad because they were dying for a Muffaletta.  Thankfully the restaurant next door, Franks, was opened and we dined there.  One of the “Sopranos” stars was dining two tables away.  I didn’t watch the show so I can’t tell you which character he played.  My husband might mention it in his blog so you can find out there.

We escaped NOLA just in time to avoid Saints’ traffic and drove on home.  Our next trip is in the planning stage.  Maybe we’ll head south for the winter.