Nearby some 20,000 egrets
nest each year on specially
built piers in a pond called
“Bird City.”
Next morning we visited
St. Martinville. Founded in
1765, shortly after the
arrival of the first French
Acadians, and soon nick-
named Le Petit Paris d’
Amerique, it is the loveliest
of Cajun towns, literally
dripping with French culture
and Acadian history. On its
immaculate square, you’ll
find St. Martin de Tours
Catholic Church, mother
church of the Cajun Country
established in 1765, and the
Evangeline Monument,
Visitors stroll the grounds of a re-created Cajun bayou settlement at Acadian Village in Lafayette
a statue of the Acadian
St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church was established by French missionaries in 1765 heroine immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic
poem “Evangeline.” The Evangeline Oak from the same poem
is here as well and is said to be the “most photographed tree in
America.” As guests at the neighboring Old Castillo Hotel — a
handsome 200-year-old Greek Revival-style B&B — our room
fell under the soft shade of the famous oak.
Lunch on this day was at Café Des Amis in Breaux Bridge,
just minutes east of Lafayette. We’d been tipped off to this
gourmet Cajun eatery through articles in some leading foodie
magazines and owner/chef Cynthia Breaux’s crawfish pie and
fried eggplant wheels topped with crawfish etouffeé could not
have been tastier.
Breaux Bridge may be best known as the home of Mulate’s
Cajun Restaurant. Food is good here but it is the expansive
dance floor and nightly Cajun music from the region’s top bands
that pack in the crowds. At Mulate’s, Cajuns and visitors alike
gather to laissez les bon temps rouler (let the good times roll).
We selected the Martin House Inn, a beautifully restored 1898
Victorian B&B across the street from Café des Amis, as our base
for exploring points of interest in and around Lafayette, Acadiana’s
largest city.
We visited the city’s two excellent folklife villages, Acadian
Village and Vermillionville, gaining considerable insight into
Acadian society in southern Louisiana. Both complexes are
operated by non-profit foundations that emphasize the authen-
ticity of exhibits which include a wide array of historic structures
salvaged from around the region.
Come Saturday night, it has long been the Cajun custom to
head for Eunice to sit in on the “Rendez Vous des Cajuns” radio
SPRING 2004 33
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5