Barton Rouge

We are back!  We are officially on the other side of our first trip to "Barton" Rouge, as my mother-in-law likes to call it!  We flew down early (very early) last Tuesday morning and got home early (very early) Saturday morning.  We had a great time, and most importantly found a wonderful place to live!

When we arrived in BTR, we hopped off the plane, grabbed our rental car and headed downtown to Fresh Salads & Wraps at the Main Street Market for a light, fresh lunch.  I was super excited to try that place because I'd read about how wonderful it was, plus it's at the permanent location for the Red Stick farmer's market.  I had a spicy thai salad, and it did not disappoint!  Then, before we headed to see our first apartment of the day, we went over to Coffee Call for some cafe au lait (iced) and beignets.. mm!  Those were our first, and this may be blasphemous, but I actually liked the beignets from CC more than from Cafe du Monde (more on that later).  Oh, what I wouldn't give for some of those sweet nuggets right now!
 


 We drove over to our first apartment appointment at Maison Bocage.  Now, going into this search, this was my favorite.  I loved the photos that I saw, I loved that it was rated #1 in BTR on apartmentratings.com, and it just seemed like a great place.  Pricy, but great.  We were so excited to see the apartments because our Albany apartment is-- not so great.  Just look at this face and how excited he is!  Clearly, this was our first appointment!  By the end of Wednesday (day 2 of apartment hunting), I was getting some pretty hefty frowns!

See more after the jump!

 Now, it might be easier to visualize the apartment if you look at the floor plan and follow along.  So you'll notice when you walk into the apartment, there's a coat closet (not something many apartments had, actually), and the guest bathroom and guest bedroom with its adjoining walk-in-closet.  You then come into the kitchen which is big, beautiful and open to the dining and living room.  At the back of the apartment is a laundry room for which we provide the machines.  That room is more than large enough for the w/d as well as shelving for a pantry or extra storage.  The living space is also very large, and all units have a wood-burning fireplace in the living room.  The living room also has windows and a door that leads onto the patio, where there is more storage.  At the back of the apartment is the master, which is easily larger than our large room now, and the master bath.  The master bath is HUGE.  I mean, if you walk in and shut the door, it's the size of our guest room now.  Easily.  The master has two sinks, tons of storage, a small linen closet, and our master walk-in closet.  The model had a vanity set up in the bathroom, but I think we'll just buy a nice piece of furniture to hide Dora's litter box.  Here are some photos below:

The kitchen, which has a built-in microwave and tons of counter space.  Notice the dark laminate floors (love!)

The laundry room.  Huge, right? Comes with shelving (awesome) and even more room behind the door.

The dining room is open to the kitchen, and there is a beautiful chandelier above the table.

Living room.  We love the windows, which were suprisingly hard to come by in apartments in the BTR area.  We also love the fireplace and ceiling fan, as well as the ample space for our living room furniture.

View of the dining/living room/master bedroom from the dining table.

(taken from the bathroom)

Master bedroom.  More great windows, and even more space that can't be seen in the photo.  Also, a ceiling fan.

 

 

Master bathroom.  More space and storage than we know what to do with.  And TWO SINKS!  Space!  Storage!  And a real shower that doesn't spray water all over the sink, with a real tub!  For those of you who have seen our (one) bathroom now, you know what this means to us! And that closet.  Oh man, that closet!

 

 

 

Guest bedroom and bath.  Wonderful.

 

We saw many more apartments (7 more, to be exact), but the short story is that this was it.  It's in a great neighborhood off of Jefferson Highway, one of the less busy streets in Baton Rouge.  It's also very close to a neighborhood Walmart grocery and Towne Center, a plaza filled with shops (Gap, American Eagle, Loft, Whole Foods) and restaurants (Coldstone, Bonefish Grill, Carraba's).  This is super great, because as we discovered, traffic in Baton Rouge is a nightmare. Nightmare.  So having a bunch of stuff really close helps very much!

 

With all of that, plus some perks for Mike being an LSU employee, we decided this was it.  On Friday before we left, we went back, handed in our application and fees, and will have first choice of the apartments as soon as they become available!  So now, we just get to daydream about living there and how we'll decorate the space. :)

 

In the meantime, we had plenty of other adventures!  On Tuesday night, Hugh, Mike's dad, drove in to hang out with us from their home outside of Dallas (an 8 hour drive!).  We went out to dinner at Mason's and there, we had our first alligator.

The boys and their alligator

Alligator appetizer.. it wasn't bad!

My dinner: boiled cajun shrimp with a cheese and jalapeno grit cake and sweet potato fries.  Mmm!

 



Mike and his jumbo stuffed fried shrimp. (that is pure happiness on that face right there).

Hugh excited to dig into his mac-n-cheese!

 

 

Since we saw all of the apartments and area that we wanted to see between Monday and Tuesday, we decided to go into New Orleans on Thursday.  Why  not, right? Neither of us had been, so it was a great excuse to go.  Now, we know very little about the city and luckily we had great friends help us out (thanks, Nicole!) paired with a bunch of online research.  And, we're sort of food obsessed, so we planned our visit around food.  First stop? Coop's place.  This place is, as another guest told us, "highly rated."  It is the spot for cajun as well as fried chicken.  It's just a little hole in the wall slimy pub type place, but man was the food good. 

 

 

I had the taster plate, complete with a seafood gumbo appetizer, red beans and rice, a piece of fried chicken, cajun shrimp (my favorite!) and a rabbit and sausage jambalaya.  When in Rome, right?  Mike had some down-home fried chicken and an Abita beer.  We left with bellies full, but headed to Cafe du Monde anyway.  Cafe du Monde is the original spot for beignets, and is a super busy tourist spot.  When we were there it was in the 50's, which is chilly in the shade, and windy.  It was still very busy, which is something considering a majority of the seating is outdoors.  We enjoyed some beignets and cafe (mine au lait, Mike's black), as we tried to warm up.

 

 

 

 

 

From there, we continued to explore the area by Jackson Square and even found the cruise ship dock!

 

We enjoyed our time in "Barton Rouge" and New Orleans, and cannot wait to get back down there!  Only 5 more months until we will be moving for good!  Thanks for sharing our adventure with us!