A Chateau on the Bayou - Raceland, Houma, Thibodaux, Galliano, Mathews

Come enjoy a relaxing stay in this country
Victorian home, A Chateau on the Bayou B&B,
located on the banks of Bayou Lafourche
30 min. from the N.O. airport, Galliano,
or
Morgan City, 10 min. from Thibodaux, and 15 min. from Houma, Larose, and Luling. Close to airboat
and swamp tours and plantation homes.

Rest in the hammock and watch the bayou flow slowly by or rock in the comfortable rockers on the back porch. Watch the water birds searching the floating vegetation for food. Catch sight of a bald eagle soaring over the bayou where fish are jumping.
Catch a glimpse of an alligator raise its head above water or an egret perched on the wharf. Hear the sounds of birds, crickets, owls, and bullfrogs.
 




 


 





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Consider having your next special event at
"A Chateau on the Bayou Bed & Breakfast"
located right on Bayou Lafourche.  
    • Birthday Party
    • Baby Shower
    • Bridal Shower
    • Girl's Getaway Weekend
    • Red Hat Gathering
    • Family Reunions
    • Teas
    • Small Wedding

Call (985) 537-6773 to discuss further.

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A Chateau on the Bayou is conveniently located near New Orleans, Luling, Thibodaux, and Houma,
surrounded by Cajun bayous, swamps, and marshes. Visit us for your Southern Louisiana vacation!

 

Welcome to Louisiana!  Your innkeeper will be Claudette L. Pitre, a native Cajun born here in Lafourche Parish. She is a retired elementary school counselor and teacher who has worked with Kindergarten through third grade children and parents.

She opened her bed and breakfast in January of 2006, and has had various visitors from all over the world. She has traveled extensively around the world, herself, and welcomes everyone from all nationalities into her home to experience the cajun culture and hospitality in this area.

Claudette Ledet Pitre is a member of the Louisiana Travel Association, Professional Association of International Innkeepers, LA Bed & Breakfast, MidSouth Women of Tourism, and SKAL International New Orleans.


Winner of the Luxury Travel Guide Award out of
the UK for the B&B of Louisiana, 2016

Winner of the LTPA Louey Award
for the B&B of Louisiana, Jan., 2017
 
This article was published in the Tri Parish Times newspaper on Oct. 1, 2008.
Retired teacher brings her job home
Lafourche bed & breakfast offers visitors Cajun Hospitality
By Sophia Ruffin

Claudette Ledet Pitre is living her dream.  She’s converted her 21 year old, four bedroom, three bathroom Victorian home, which is nestled along Bayou Lafourche in Raceland, into a cozy bed and breakfast. The idea came shortly after the storms on the evening of her mother’s funeral.  Pitre and her sisters were mingling with family and friends when the conversation turned to the devastation Hurricane Katrina had caused in neighboring parishes.

“We had just buried my mother,” Pitre recalled.  “We went back to her house and sat around for a few hours.  Then someone mentioned that a group of animal rescue workers were living in tents at the old Rosela Plantation about two miles from my house.” The group was from Seattle.  They were part of the crew helping rescue stranded animals in New Oreans." "These people were sleeping in tents and it was hot,” she said.  “I had the space and there was no way I would have let them sleep out there another night.”At the time, Pitre’s home wasn’t adorned as it is today. But, she said, the workers slept in a comfortable bed and enjoyed home-cooked Cajun meals.
            
                   By January 2006, Pitre decided to completely convert her home into a bed and breakfast.  She began studying what made B&B’s successful, applied for her licenses and visited several operations along the bayou to learn more about running her own business.
                   To furnish the rooms of her home, Pitre included a number of pieces she inherited from her mother.
“I’ve come a long way since the first time I allowed strangers, who became like family before they left, live in my home,” she said.
                
                    At the bed and breakfast, visitors can sleep in one of four bedrooms equipped with everything they would need to live like they were at home.  Visitors enjoy a deluxe continental breakfast and have access to a laundry facility and sitting area.  Rooms also have telephone, cable and Internet connections.  A professional body massage therapist is also available upon request.
                    Since opening nearly three years ago, Pitre has had guests from all over the world.  An avid traveler, she enjoys mixing her heritage with other cultures. “This is the best part about owning a bed and breakfast.  I have traveled around the world and I embrace everyone from all nationalities so they can experience a little Cajun culture,” she said.  “I build friendships and people come back again and again – just like family.
                  
                     Pitre believes that guests seek her bed and breakfast because it is convenient.  A Chateau on the Bayou is 10 minutes from Thibodaux, 15 minutes from Houma, Luling and Larose and 30 minutes from the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
                  
                   “My guests say they prefer a bed and breakfast over a hotel because it is their ‘home away from home,’” she said.  “My guest can rest in the hammock and watch the bayou flow slowly by or rock in the comfortable rocker on the back porch while watching the birds search for vegetation”

                    Sometimes they even see a bald eagle soaring over the bayou where the fish are jumping or catch a glimpse of an alligator raise its head above the water or an egret perched on the wharf,” she added.  Pitre said the Cajun hospitality experience is guaranteed.
 
 
This article was published at Houmatoday.com on June 18, 2011.

Happily ever after and more

By John DeSantis, Senior Staff Writer

Never underestimate the power of dreams. The most marvelous thing about them is not only that they come true, but that once they do, there is new life taken shape. And that new life, of the dream itself, can take us places we never dreamed possible.

Living proof of this lies in Raceland, on the banks of Bayou Lafourche.

It was there that a teacher named Claudette Pitre had cashed in her savings bonds and bought some land. This was many, many years ago, and it came at a good price.

But she didn’t know what to do with it. Maybe put a trailer on the space. Maybe something else.

And then she started making the drawings. From somewhere in the depths of her imagination, Claudette created, for her, the house of all houses.

“I could draw anything,” she says, explaining that with some of the more technical aspects of it, there was a need for help, which she received.

After the drawings came the plans, and after the plans, came the actual building.

What Claudette built on the banks of Bayou Lafourche was a marvel of a five-bedroom Victorian house, with some of the more-ornate portions borrowed from other houses, and she was just as proud as she could be.

Only five years into living there, however, came a divorce, and suddenly times were harder, but Claudette forced herself to keep the dream-house maintained in the proper fashion, because she could not imagine giving it up.

Then along came Katrina, in 2005, which did nothing to the house but did cause a neighbor on the bayou, attorney Louis St. Martin, to open the doors of his barn to hundreds of dogs and cats orphaned by the killer storm.

With the dogs and the cats came volunteers from all over, even bankers and lawyers, who wanted to help out.

They slept in tents near the barn. Claudette saw this and offered to help, so some of the people came and stayed at her five-bedroom house, and that was when the inspiration came.

Having these people from all over under her roof, cooking for them, doing all kinds of things to make them feel at home, came as second nature for Claudette.

It was as if the house had spoken to her and said, “Make me useful in a way you never dreamed possible.”

Today the resulting bed and breakfast, the Chateau on the Bayou, hosts guests from every conceivable place. In time, the operation gained success, and Claudette was no longer worried about how ends could be met, about how she could most of all maintain the house and be true to it.

“It was like I built the house, took care of it all these years, and now the house takes care of me,” she said.

Not too long ago, a couple of pilots stayed there after flying a contractor into Houma from Alabama so he could go fishing on Grand Isle. They wanted to take a tour of the swamps. Claudette had been to Zam’s on Bayou Boeuf, where she took the classes she used to teach, and had also been to the Torres Swamp Tour not far from there.

But the pilots wanted something different, so she recommended that they hook up with Arthur Matherne, who runs an airboat tour out of Des Allemands. The pilots suggested she come along, and Claudette had the time of her life.

“I couldn’t believe how fast we were going on the lake,” said Claudette, who although born and raised in Louisiana, had never been on an airboat. So in addition to such occasional excitement, there is the joy for Claudette of creating things in the kitchen for guests who come from all over the world.

French toast made with nutmeg and orange juice and macadamia nuts, blackberries, pineapple and pecans on top of yogurt with mango slices, and that’s just for one sitting.

She said that this morning she will make a Danish pancake that rises about 10 inches high and gets sprinkled with powdered sugar.

The real sweetness for Claudette, however, comes from knowledge that her dream took its own course once she got it on the right track.

It’s the reward that comes from being a study in perseverance.

“I had no idea I would end up with a bed and breakfast,” she said. “I thought I would just live happily ever after.”

And until now, she had no idea that there was such a thing as happier even than that.

 

Claudette L. Pitre
3158 Hwy. 308
Raceland, LA. 70394
(985) 537-6773 or (985) 413-6773
ClaudetteLP@Charter.net

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