Where is cajun country

Its award-winning chefs have created a wide range of dishes based on regional specialties, including blackened fish, shrimp Creole, gumbo, and all kinds of fried seafood. We even ordered a fried alligator appetizer yes, it really does taste like chicken. Southern Louisiana aka Cajun Country is a wonderful, distinctive place to visit.

Its unique surroundings and culture make you feel like you are visiting a foreign country—one where you will want to linger. Explore Cajun Country offers boomer travelers the opportunity to experience the bayous, the unique flora and fauna, and the friendly culture of southern Louisiana. Boomer travelers rely on our weekly email newsletter for fresh travel inspiration, tips, and advice. It's free! No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Skip to content. Exploring Cajun Country on a boomer road trip New Orleans gets all the attention, but the rest of southern Louisiana is just as interesting and fun as a travel destination, especially in the cooler months when you are looking to escape from northern snow and ice. Where is Cajun Country?

Our tour maneuvered past these towering cypress trees covered with Spanish moss. Like most residences of the period, the house was erected without nails. Its hand-hewn cypress timbers are fastened throughout with wooden pegs. Martinville is located in extreme south Louisiana, in the heart of Cajun Country , and situated roughly between New Iberia and Lafayette.

It is the parish seat of St. Martin Parish and has a population of about 7, residents. In St. Martinville is the Evangeline Oak made famous in Longfellow's poem. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem Evangeline made people around the world more aware of the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia and their subsequent arrival in Louisiana. Martinville, Native Americans had long hunted in this area, including the Attakapas and the Chitimacha.

Long before roads, Bayou Teche was a mile long highway, and later was an important factor in the development of St. In the mids, Louisiana's French rulers made land available in the Attakapas District for the raising of cattle to supply meat for New Orleans. Martinville is also the home to the Acadian Memorial, and the historic St.

Martin de Tours Catholic Church. The St. Cypremort Point State Park , located to the south of St. Martinville, is a favorite spot for birding enthusiasts and eco-tourists.

This acre park offers access to the Gulf of Mexico, along with a man-made beach, fishing, sailing, windsurfing, and other water sports. Marksville is a growing community in Central Louisiana, the site of the highly successful Paragon Casino Resort operated by the Tunica-Biloxi tribe.

Many other area attractions are available, such as the Hypolite Bordelon House. The city was named after Marc Eliche, an Italian trader, who established a trading post in the area about Marksville was noted on Louisiana maps as early as One of the most popular things to do in Louisiana is touring the swamps! Most tours are concentrated in South Louisiana. The area between Lafayette and Baton Rouge offers a number of swamp tours, operating from communities such as Breaux Bridge, Henderson, St.

Martinvile and Plaquemine. Learn more about Swamp Tours in the Atchafalaya Basin. Campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Lafayette crawfish make a perfect addition to Louisiana seafood gumbo , along with shrimp, crab, okra and rice. Bayou Lafourche, seen here near Thibodaux, Louisiana. Boiled Breaux Bridge crawfish, corn on the cob, and new potatoes, hot out of the boile r. Cafe des Amis, downtown, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.

Swamp scene at sunset, near Donaldsonville, Louisiana. An outdoor crawfish boil is not the only way we like to enjoy this delicacy. Shown here is a restaurant scene typical of the hundreds of restaurants all over Louisiana Shrimp fleet docked along the Atchafalaya River in Morgan City.

Evangeline Downs Racetrack in Opelousas, Louisiana. While the vast majority of the country has long abandoned organised dance, Cajuns regularly frolic, two-stepping and waltzing to Cajun and Zydeco music.

As Pastor told me, it was quite literally beaten out of children in school. In , it was Despite decline, there are concerted efforts to revive the French language: Louisiana now has the largest French immersion program in the country for schoolchildren, and a free app called LearnCajun was developed last year.

So far, the effects are unclear. The persistence of the language is a statement. It upholds a place that no longer exists as it once did, while still trying to find a niche for it in the present—not just as a tourist town, but as the symbolic centre of an entire culture.

Today, only the house's chimney stands, rising mournfully out of the water. The next night, at the Wednesday Cajun Jam at the Blue Moon Saloon , in Lafayette, fiddlers and accordionists accompanied a twenty-something woman singing in French as Katherine accepted an older gentleman's invitation to dance. He turned out to be an engineer who had come here in to work for Morton Salt, and remembers the day the dome collapsed. It was one of a few coincidences that left me feeling Acadiana was a place where the past two-steps with the present.

We spent our last day kayaking among the tupelo and cypress on Lake Martin, following Janenne deClouet, founder of Duc in Altum tours and a paddling philosopher who believes in the healing power of nature.

It echoed the bright red, and entirely real, Shinto gate we had seen at Jungle Gardens on Avery Island, another salt dome about an hour south of Lafayette. It's most famous for being home to the Tabasco factory. The torii leads the way to a year-old Buddha, a gift to hot-sauce scion Edward Avery McIlhenny in Once a year, deClouet helps lead the Eucharistic boat procession along nearby Bayou Teche that celebrates the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

Acadiana is deeply attached to the Catholic faith of its French forebears — and yet the ancient Buddha appears at home here, too. Spend a night in Lafayette, a city of , at the center of Acadiana. There are chain hotels, but we loved the food-focused Maison Madeleine just outside town. Don't miss the Jesus Bar, a cocktail spot filled with Catholic icons occupying an outbuilding on the property.

Near Abbeville, close to Avery Island, Suire's Grocery , a plate-lunch general store famous for its turtle sauce picante and pecan pies, is the best kind of throwback.