Beautiful homes, wonderful guides and great buffet
Decided to give these two plantations a visit while I was in the area. We went to San Francisco first as we purchased the lunch buffet at Houmas House with our entry. Walking up the home is so pretty and has such vibrant colors. The guide greeted us warmly adn made us feel quite welcome. Walking through it was interesting to learn about the floors and why they were built the way they were. I wish more of the front gardens had been salvaged from the flooding. The hand painted ceilings and decorative painting to the wood moldings was absolutely exquisite! The top floor of the home was very nice and it was a great touch to get to exit from the main, front stairs. The property had some slave homes you were able to self tour and some pretty trees with nice photo spots.
Next, we drove over the Houmas House. It was about 30 min away but the trip was an easy one. When pulling in the drive is almost like you are entering a secret garden, there are trees and plants all over and it is so pretty! We walked in and checked in without any problems, went straight to the restaurant as we had worked up an appetite at the other plantation. They said it woudl be a couple minutes and took my phone number to call me when our table was ready. We decided to walk back over to the Turtle Bar and ordered up a couple of beverages. The bartender was quite skilled and made a show of mixing our drinks! It was so fun and we had our table ready just moments later. When we were seated we went and got some of the food, everything looked and tasted AMAZING and the service was top notch. They kept everything full and the serving area clean. You have GOT to save room for at least a small taste of the bread pudding, I am not usually a fan of that sort of thing and I could have eaten a plate of this alone! Once we had our fill and finished our beverages we walked over to the meeting place for the house tour, since we were early for the tour we walked around and looked at the beautiful gardens. I almost wish we had come here first as the gardens are quite extensive and you could spend half a day just walking through them! Our tour guide was dressed in time accurate attire to the hey day of the home. She was super nice and made the tour a fun time for all involved. One thing that stood out in this home was that there weren't really any spaces that were blocked off. You could fully walk around and explore the rooms and the items within. We even got to touch the yard darts and some of the old canes in the billiards room. The stairs leading to the second floor were gorgeous, the spiral was such a nice touch to the home. It was such a great way to end the day, I look forward to visiting this property again in the future!