Vermilion trip ... of wonderment.

Ahhh, Business trips... I love 'em. Free food. Fresh new rental car to play in. Hookers... Well, no hookers, but the business trips are still good.

This time around, Kristina and I went down to Vermilion Parish to their school board offices, which are located in a gorgeous old school from the 30's. It's about a 4 hour drive, straight down I-49 from here. We left at about 2 and arrived at about 6 at the Extended Stay .... More about that later...

On a side note, let me remind those readers who aren't familiar with Louisiana's geography that Abbeville is just South of Lafayette. This means that a short drive will land Abbevillians in Lafayette, a pretty large city in Louisiana. This is where we spent the first night, or the dinner portion.

Kristina and I drove over there to see what kind of restaurants they had to offer, and we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of choices they had. Everything Shreveport had was there, and a lot more, I believe. So, we had plenty to choose from, but ultimately we settled on Macaroni Grill.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my company for allowing me to enjoy the delicious Pork Chops from Macaroni Grill in Lafayette. Thank you. They were wonderful.

If you have a Macaroni Grill in your area, leave immediately to go there for the pork chops. Don't put on pants, just go. Well, on second thought, put on pants... those legs are awfully pasty.

While in Macaroni grill, our waiter found out somehow that someone was having a birthday, so he belted out the birthday song in Italian to the birthday group. It was pretty impressive, and the waiter seemed happy with himself afterwards. Anywho, that's all that happened the first night.

This morning, I woke up, and headed out for our 8:30 meeting at the school board offices. The meeting was uneventful, and very long to be in the same seat without a break. However, we accomplished our goals, and were happy with the results of the meeting.

Afterward, Russ (their Technology Coordinator I believe) and Cindy (one of their staff who works with our software regularly) came to lunch with Kristina and I. Or maybe we went with them, I'm not sure how it worked really. We got somewhere, anyways. That somewhere we went was Dupuy's (Doopweez) in Abbeville... a short walk from the school board offices.

Apparently, they've been around since the late 1800's. Yeah, that's really old. However, the gumbo was pretty darn tasty and everyone seemed really impressed with the food they got there. The atmosphere was probably the best part though. You've got a small Louisiana town's people in there, Zydeco music playing, seafood being served all over the place and everyone's having a good time. It was nice.

We headed back at about 2:00 and arrived at about 6:00.

So, for the trip we were given a rental car, a Chrysler mini-van which was incredibly nice... considering it was a mini-van. It rode like a dream, had nice speakers, nice little features... and a decent sized engine. It was the best surprise of the trip.

Onto the hotel... it was nice. It wasn't perfect, but it was very nice. My only complaints, if you could even consider them real complaints, had to do with the lack of an iron in the rooms and the computer in the lobby being spyware ridden. Both of them are complaints based around the same idea... if you offer/advertise a service, make sure it works and is worth it.

The iron was available through the front desk staff. I got an iron and an ironing board, but the legs on the ironing board were about two inches long. Long enough to stand it up on a bed or something, but not long enough to do any kind of effective ironing. Secondly, the computer that was there was our means of finding directions, but almost every site was redirected, and the searches through google were all pointing to the lowest ranked results. It was ridiculous. Now, let me say that I'm glad they provided the services... BUT I think advertising a service, and then delivering in a cruddy fashion is worse than not having the service at all. Why advertise, internet access and iron service if neither is functional?

That's the story of the trip. If you ever get a chance to go down there, I think it'd be worth your time to drive down and visit the area. If you don't like the town, you've always got Lafayette.