Vermillionville
Lafeyette is at the heart of Acadiana and we’re here for the Acadian village museums, the food and the music. We start with Vermillionville, a Cajun/Creole Heritage and Folklife Park (Vermillionville is the original name of what is now modern-day Lafayette). True to form, we start our visit with the on-site restaurant, La Cuisine de Maman, because it was listed in our “1000 Things to See Before You Die -U.S” book. It was just fine, and if we hadn’t such high expectations we probably would have liked it a lot more. Being in our 60′s now, we’re getting a bit finicky about the 100o things we have left to do here, let alone in foreign countries. We have no regrets about this visit, though.
Vermillionville home
It’s a pretty park to roam at leisure – lots of historical buildings, some of them with crafts demonstrations and Cajun/Creole musicians in the schoolhouse. One of our favorite simple pleasures was coming across a rope-pulled wooden ferry, and pulling ourselves to the other side of the river.
Next, we head to the nearby Acadian Cultural Center. It’s a good introduction to the history of Acadiana, starting with the deportation of the french Acadians from Canada, their settling in this part of Louisiana and how their distinctive culture still thrives. We love coming full circle-last year we did the Evangeline trail in Nova Scotia, so we’ve now followed the story from beginning to end. Or maybe I should say, to another beginning.
St. Martin de Tours Church
After a stop at a lovely church square in St. Martinsville and a visit to St. Martin de Tours, the Mother Church of the Cajuns, we end the evening with dinner at Mulate’s in Breaux Bridge, with a Cajun band and crawfish dinner. We may have missed the best dancing part of the night – there were people in the parking lot putting on boots as they got out of their cars as we left.
