Yesterday we went into New Orleans again on our day off. We went downtown New Orleans with another couple, John and Audrey Tjaarda. They're from Chino, California. Annie has worked with Audry and I've worked with John so far. We first went to see the WWII National Museum. This was very interesting and well done. We started out with having a coffee first (of course you have to have coffee in the morning before doing anything).

We got tickets for the museum as well as a multi-media movie about WWII. This movie has been made just for this museum and took longer than the Americans were in the war, i.e. it took 5 years to make. It is directed by Tom Hanks and was very well done. It showed a mixture of actual film footage, computer generated scenes, flashing lights, sounds and real props that appeared and disappeared. In one scene about the Battle of the Bulge, it actually snowed (simulated of corse) in the theatre. The seats rumbled when artillery strikes hit or tanks drove by. All in all quite impressive. The museum itself has a good collection of material about the war in Europe and the Pacific. A lot of information on D-Day is being displayed. It is amazing how much of a struggle it was to overturn the evil empire of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We could have spend most of the day learning about all the exhibits, but since we wanted to do some other things as well, we quit at around 2 o'clock.

After visiting the museum, we went on a 2 hour excursion on the Nachez, which is a replica of a Mississppi sternwheeler steam boat. This ship can entertain up to a 1000 people and is, up to this point, the fasted sternwheeler on the Mississppi. We had beautiful weather again, sunny and around 74 deg F. We took the tour around the harbour sites and Naval station along the Mississippi. The guide had a running commentary on the sites along the river and the ships that we encountered. We had a great time. We also met Tom and Grace on the boat. We had planned to get on a different river boat, the Creole Queen. However, just when we came to the dock after visiting the museum, we saw our boat go around a bend in the river. In other words, we missed it. It was supposed to leave at 3pm according to a brochure we obtained (which later appeared to be out of date). However, when we got to the dock at 2:20, it was already gone (it left a little after 2). We just made it to the next boat, the Sanchez, which was supposed to leave at 2:30 and we were just about the last to board. Anyway, it all worked out and it was about 5 o'clock when finished the excursion and stepped into our Honda agian and motored back home to get ready to go out for supper.

On Sunday we slept in until 7:20am and then got some breakfast and got ready for church. We went to the First Baptist church again and had the opportunity to worship our God in a very meaningful way.

In the afternoon, Annie and I took a leisurely drive along the Mississippi. We had hoped to see some nice countryside. However, what we saw most was lots of refineries, factories and industrial sites interspersed with sugar cane fields. We had hoped to visit a plantation house but the only one we saw had a big festival going on. There were lots of people and lots of stands like a flea market. We didn't really feel like joining another large crowd of people. It was nice though to just get away with the two of us.

Annie will be working in the kitchen for the rest of our stay here which she doesn't mind at all. That's it again for now. Till next time.