Golf Guide: Lafayette - LA

Come to Lafayette, Louisiana, and you might order boudin (sausages) or seafood gumbo for lunch and perhaps jambalaya or broiled crawfish with a side of rice or potato salad for dinner topped off with pecan pralines. Or do the group thing an dig into a crawfish boil - crawfish, potatoes, onions and corn all cooked up in water with spices, dumped on something flat and eaten by hand after you've added Tony Chachere's or some other favorite seasoning sauce. You are after all in the heart of Cajun and Creole country where food is celebrated as an event.

Located on the Vermilion River in the southwestern part of the state, Lafayette is a small city with an eclectic heartbeat where you can be entertained by Cajun-inspired music like Rhythms on the River and free concerts at River Ranch Town Square. And come nightfall local dives and water holes are very much alive while dance clubs and sports bars like the Grant Street Dancehall and The Blue Moon Saloon kick into high gear with honky tonk and blues. And BTW, you can rent one of the funky rooms or even the whole Blue Moon Guest House.

Golf courses in and around Lafayette tend to flow over fairly flat land punctuated by cypress trees, bayous and sand. The Jay & Lionel Herbert Municipal Golf Course, the city's original course hosts many regional tournaments while Les Vieux Chenes dating from 1977 and renovated in 2009, is another local favorite.

The Wetlands a recent addition to the Audubon Golf Trail features water on 11 holes along with wide rolling fairways and well-bunkered TifDwarf greens. Another Audubon track, the Atchafalaya Golf Course at Idlewild by Robert Von Hagge, showcases the hauntingly beautiful Atchafalaya Basin along with more than 40 species of birds, five lakes and 10 native wetlands.

For a change of pace take a swamp tour of the Atchafalaya Basin, a place loaded with beautiful birds, fearsome alligators and enormous moss-draped cypress trees. And... oh yes. You may want to do some retail therapy at one of Lafayette's large malls like the Mall of Acadiana or River Ranch.