The River Road (LA-18) follows the Mississippi levee between Donaldsonville and New Orleans, passing a succession of antebellum plantation houses. Nottoway Plantation, about 10 kilometres north of town, is the largest surviving plantation house in the South — an enormous white-columned pile that rewards a tour even if you find the nostalgia-heavy framing unsettling. Houmas House, further north towards New Orleans, is the most photogenic of the lot, with formal gardens and a well-run culinary programme attached. The road itself is as much the point as any single house: the wide flat landscape, the levee grass, the petrochemical plants interspersed with the old estates. Together they tell the story of Louisiana sugar wealth and the enslaved labour that created it in a way no single site quite manages alone.