New Orleans

I’ve been to New Orleans several times, but only to party with friends and wander up and down Bourbon Street. Miranda had never been so we decided to go as adults and do adult things. A late night flight from St. Louis on Thursday had us in New Orleans for some work on Friday and then out the door to see the sights. Nearly everything would be walking distance, and New Orleans has a trolley system, so no rental car on this trip. You can spend the weekend in New Orleans drinking and eating whatever smells good along the way, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We did a lot of research to find places to eat that hopefully wouldn’t disappoint, things to see that weren’t just on Bourbon Street, and sweets to try, even if they weren’t at the places we’d heard of. Here’s what we came up with…

Bourbon Street

You can’t go to New Orleans without visiting Bourbon Street. Even one of my favorite comedians, Dave Atell, had to show up for the first few seconds of his New Orleans episode before moving on. We actually stayed on the Bourbon Street, but it changes names to Carondelet once you’re on the other side of Canal St., so getting there and back was a breeze. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Club Vacations New Orleans Resort, because we needed an IHG stay to maintain our point balance. I did find it amusing that they gave us wristbands with the hotel name on it instead of room cards. They felt like a reminder or instructions if folks became too intoxicated to remember where they were staying. Don’t be fooled though, this IHG was not a club or a resort, the room was nice enough, and if we were staying longer, the kitchen and fridge would have come in real handy. Miranda got us take out breakfast at Bread and Butter Cafe and it did not disappoint. After I got some work in on Friday, and Miranda finished an online class, we set out for the infamous Bourbon Street. The main drag is really only about 10 blocks long from Canal St. to St. Philip St. Royal Street runs parallel and offers a more artsy look and less of a crowd. We grabbed a couple of frozen drinks and set out to see what there was to see. It was still the early afternoon, so plenty of drinking, but not the large crowds that we’d see the rest of the weekend. We stopped for lunch at Voodoo Chicken, these things are all over the place and it was pretty good. After a walk down Canal St., we arrived at the mall down on the riverwalk for a stroll past the shops. This is the mall that’s right outside the cruise terminal and it has a Cafe Du Monde, a perfect place to kill a little time if you’ve got a later flight after your cruise ends. Our final stop of the day was a little dive bar called the Pour House @ District for a beer before heading back to the hotel.

Saturday Bikes and Beer

The only thing we had set on the calendar today was an e-bike tour at 10 am, so we got breakfast at the Ruby Slipper on Canal. There are several of these restaurants in the area and it started as a food truck during the Katrina cleanup effort. The food was good, and we had no wait at all, but we also got there at about 8 am. Our e-bike tour was a little hot and cold. After getting some attitude about never having ridden e-bikes before (no experience was required according to the reservation), our guide gave everyone a quick tutorial and we were on our way towards Frenchmen St. We were warned that this area had some fun stuff, but was also a high crime area, looking down at your phone was a dead giveaway that you weren’t from around there. The e-bikes were fun, and the drivers were pretty accommodating of us.

We stopped for snow cones, because that’s apparently a popular thing to do here. They drizzle condensed milk across the top to add some sweetness. We continued on after our break to New Orleans City Park but first made a stop at one of the St. Louis cemeteries. We learned that bodies remain in the tomb for a year, where the heat of the New Orleans summer causes rapid decomposition and leaves nothing but bones. The bones are then moved to the ground once another body is moved in. This allows whole families to be laid to rest in the same tomb in a city where burial ground is scarce. We continued on to the park, which is the equivalent of Forest Park in St. Louis, with miles of trails, an art museum, sports fields, and a golf course. We stopped for a little while to enjoy the view of the Live Oaks with the Spanish Moss creating an eerie look along the waterways. All along the ride, our guide was talking about neighborhoods that have been gutted for vacation rentals, causing the price of housing to skyrocket. He said it’s the same story in many touristy cities, New Orleans was just a little late to the game, hurricanes regularly causing severe damage doesn’t help. On our ride back, our guide got a little hot and belligerent with a motorist for honking at us, I’m just going to assume he was working on getting his meds right.

For the second half of the day, we decided to take the advice of a friend who used to live here and ride the St. Charles Ave. trolley and just hop off if we saw something we liked. That lasted about 3 stops and we gave up because it was packed, the windows were very dirty, and the trolley stopped every couple of blocks. We asked someone later and they said that the trolleys are generally packed on the weekend, not only that, Alabama was in town to play LSU. We stopped and posed for a picture outside Igor’s where my friend Darrell worked when I visited him down here 14 years ago. Consulting our list of breweries, we started towards The Courtyard Brewery but first found Care Forgot. This one wasn’t very large, but it had space at the bar and a few beers we wanted to try so it became our first stop. After our beer flight, we continued on to The Courtyard Brewery, grabbed a couple of beers, and hung out in their nearly trailer park looking courtyard.

We could tell that rain was moving in, so we started back towards to hotel and planned on trying to catch Devil Moon BBQ before it closed but didn’t make it in time. Instead we settled on the menu at Brewery Saint X, the fish n’ chips were excellent, Miranda’s pick wasn’t as good.

Powdered Sugar makes everything better

Today was the day Miranda had been waiting for since we decided on New Orleans for this trip. Beignet day! From the beginning though, our plan felt like it was destined for failure. Café Du Monde is the place everyone has heard of, so with it raining pretty decently, we waited for the trolley on Canal St. to take us to the one near Jackson Square. After watching multiple trolley’s go by, and the app continuing to reset when the next one would come, we gave up and walked down the Canal St. to Cafe Beignet. The line was pretty crazy so a quick google search and short walk later, and we were waiting in a much shorter line at Cafe Beignet on Royal Street. If you’re missing the point of the story then here it is, these things are everywhere!

To work off our beignets, we walked down to Jackson Square, got a few pictures, and then started our museum trek with The Cabildo and its exhibits covering the history of New Orleans. Our second museum was just next door, The Presbytère. This one was a little bit stranger. The first floor had an extensive exhibit covering Hurricane Katrina with saved artifacts and dozens of screens showing news broadcasts, weather, and interviews with people before, during, and after the hurricane.

Upstairs was far lighter, with the history of Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

For lunch we visited a little restaurant called Turtle Bay, but we forgot that it was Sunday and it was full of football fans. We managed to find a seat upstairs and get a pizza before heading on to our first brewery stop, Brieux Carré Brewing Co. This was another small building, but they had a covered patio outside and we enjoyed a flight here while waiting out another round of rain. As the rain let up, we moved on and continued our plan to hit the French Market, waterfront, and then circle back towards Bourbon St. and a stop at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar. We got to see two small parades that afternoon, one looked like it was for a birthday, and the other one was definitely a wedding. As it was starting to get dark, the Superdome had let out and there were Atlanta Falcons fans everywhere. It felt like it wouldn’t be long before something got out of hand, so we ended our day where it began, kind of…. Cafe Beignet, but this time the one on Bourbon Street.

World War Two Memorial on veterans day

One of the first things that caught my eye while researching things to do in New Orleans was the National World War Two museum, formerly known as the D-Day Museum. It felt fitting to visit on Veterans Day, and amazingly enough, we got in for free for being veterans. We started the day first at Majoria's Commerce Restaurant, a neat little diner along the way.

After breakfast, we continued the walk to the museum. The first experience at the museum is boarding a stationary train that was made to look like the trains we’ve seen in any number of WWII movies with troops leaving for the coast to board ships and head off to the front. The museum is split between the “Road to Toyko” and the “Road to Berlin”, you could easily spend 6-8 hours at this museum if you take your time and watch the film showing in the Solomon Victory Theater. I’ve read dozens of books on WWII but still got a lot out of the museum. One of the most compelling pieces a small theater that played on loop a series of interviews with survivors and liberators of the Nazi death camps. One of the camps we visited earlier this year was featured prominently with multiple interviews, pictures, and videos.

It’s very easy to come down to New Orleans, have a great time on Bourbon St. and feel like you’ve seen the place. That was certainly my experience the first five times I had been here. This time we got to see some of the sights, enjoy more of the food, and scope out what we’d do if we ever have some time to kill before or after a cruise out of the terminal here. We got a number of recommendations when people saw that we were checking in to places here that we couldn’t follow up on, so we know what we’ll be up to next time.