Day 8 -- Cajun Country

We lay low this morning. Then, after lunch, we headed in to Lafayette to the Acadian Cultural Center, part of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park. Then we perused an engaging exhibit on French Acadian settlers in the area, and the kids earned Junior Ranger badges.



In the gift shop, Natalie bought a book called "Conversational Cajun French," which she thinks will give her a head start on her seventh-grade French lessons. She certainly will have an advantage over the other students, who won't know how to say, "She must have a tapeworm," until at least the second year.



We had an hour before our 6 p.m. dinner reservations at the renowned Mulate's restaurant in the town of Breaux Bridge, so we killed 30 seconds by strolling the entire downtown. Then we fit ourselves into a cozy window booth in a bright, inviting diner called Café des Amis, where we absorbed ourselves in a heated Uno match until dinnertime.

Mulate's had been recommended to us by a friend, and we were especially excited about the live Cajun music that started at 7. The inside of the place, with its checkered tableclothes and wood paneling reminded us instantly of Merlotte's, the fictional restaurant where Anna Paquin hangs out with her vampire friends in "True Blood." Then we realized that, hmmm, "Merlotte's" and "Mulate's" sound suspiciously similar.



The music was okay, but the hottest topic of conversation was a photograph hanging over our table. The walls were covered with dozens of framed celebrity photographs, some of them signed and all of them clearly from the 1970s and '80s -- like the one of the jazz fusion group Spiro Gyra, and another of the hard rock band Molly Hatchet. We're talking *that* caliber of celebrity.

Keith and I debated the identity of the star in one of the photos. I thought it might be a young Bruce Springsteen. Keith vehemently contented that it was Burt Reynolds circa "Deliverance." If we settled this, the loser was going to have to skip dessert. It's a candid photograph. and the guy's head is turned as he shakes hands with the locals, so it's hard to tell for sure. The waitress seemed to agree with Keith, but she was just agreeable in general, and she couldn't confirm anything. We finally consulted a list of all the celebrities who have visited Mulates, which was posted near the front door, and were able to rule out both Bruce Springsteen AND Burt Reynolds, because neither made the list. We narrowed it down to possibly Armand Assante. Anyway, neither of us got dessert.