one mississippi two mississippi

i know the name of this blog makes reference to walking in los angeles it even has la la on its name, but sometimes we walk in other places, so i thought i'd share our experience of walking in the deep south.
when i was 17 years old i moved to gautier ms and lived there for a year as an exchange student. i was a senior in a small catholic school in pascagoula and it was that year when i met my now husband. i've been back many times ever since i was 17 but now that i am married to somebody from there i go every 2 years (sometimes more, every 2 years is not enough!) for the holidays.
i always tell the story of how when i used to talk to my mom over the phone she would say "well you can just walk there" and i would laugh and then explain to her that there were no sidewalks. i think the cities there still have a long way to go (in terms of urban planning) you definitely cannot survive without a car there, transit is almost non existent and until this day not every neighborhood has sidewalks... however! on this visit we documented the little walk we took in ocean springs downtown just to show that you CAN walk at least in some areas. not all towns on the gulf coast have a downtown but the ones that do, have the most charming little downtowns ever!

after spending christmas with our family we then headed to new orleans in lousiana (my favorite city in the country) and of course needless to say, we walked everywhere there and the weather let us ride the bikes one day, which was enough really because we stayed in our friends house which is in faubourg marigny and really close to the french quarter.
i got to eat in all the new restaurants i wanted to try, and ryan got all the bike lane pictures a man could want. we went to a lot of bars on frenchmen st. and listened to the bands on the street and we had an awesome time as we always do in nola. then my mother in law and her boyfriend came over for new years eve and we had a blast celebrating the end of 2016