Our trip to the Big Easy

Goodbye Dallas...


...Hello New Orleans!!!



We arrived in NO early Saturday morning. We hopped in our rental car and after a quick drive-by tour of the Downtown and French Quarter area, got an early check-in at our hotel...dropped our bags and set off on foot.
The view from our hotel room...


Saturday lunch:
Central Grocery on Decatur

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This is just a little grocery-type store with spices and jarred olives, etc. They also serve muffaletta sandwiches. We got a whole muffaletta (HUGE!)
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and a stuffed artichoke and walked to Jackson Square park (just a block or 2 away) to eat it.


The view from our bench...


The muffaletta was great, but I enjoyed it WITHOUT the olives. I just don't like them, I tried! The stuffed artichoke was just ok. Tasted like we were just eating garlic/parmesan breading.

After this and some more walking around, we headed back to the hotel for a heavenly uninterrupted 3 hour nap!!!
After the nap we enjoyed the courtyard at our hotel. It was in the 70's and pretty outside.




Although a 70% chance of rain was forecasted, and I walked around carrying an umbrella all day and night, we never saw a drop!

Saturday dinner:
Gumbo Shop

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This place had a beautiful patio in the back (actually I guess it was its courtyard) and good food. Unfortunately I think I discovered a food allergy that I have after eating here!
Jeff had the Seafood gumbo appetizer and the Red beans and rice, which came with a couple big andouille sausages.
I had the chicken andouille gumbo for appetizer and then the Crawfish Etouffee. So much for me trying to branch out! The etouffee was good and I ate a lot of it...and then I woke up the next morning with my throat SOOOO swollen and in extreme pain. The crawfish (which I can't remember ever having before) is the only thing I can guess that did this to me. My throat was swollen and sore for the rest of the trip! :(
I also had a side called MACQUE CHOUX CORN - It was like a spicy cream corn and was very good.
At the Gumbo Shop we also had a dessert of a Praline Sundae and it was amazing.


Saturday night we enjoyed some people watching from a cool balcony on Bourbon and Toulouse.
Bourbon Street Saturday night (but still early)...




This little trophy man was all over the Quarter the whole time we were there.


...then we walked past a quaint little Irish bar that had a pool table. We walked in...and then stayed there most of the night. It was called Molly's on Toulouse.

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We met some interesting people here! One homeless guy hung out by the pool table with us most of the night...he told Jeff about losing his sister and her baby (by drowning) in Katrina, and how he stayed up on his roof for 3 days before being rescued...and all he kept telling me was how pretty I was...that was a little creepy but he was a nice man. Jeff and I made fun of ourselves for hanging out in the most Texas-like bar in New Orleans for the whole evening!


They had a really cool jukebox with great songs so that was Jeff's excuse for staying there :) Plus he beat a lot of people at pool!!



Sunday we didn't set an alarm and we slept right through breakfast. I was not feeling well from the throat and stuff, but we headed out to eat lunch.

Sunday lunch:
The Original Pierre Maspero's
This restaurant was on a corner across from the Louisiana court building. Jeff got a shrimp? po-boy with tabasco mayonnaise (good!) and I just had barely half a cheeseburger. They had Abita Amber on draft (which isn't uncommon out there) and Jeff enjoyed that too! Our waitress was really sweet, she brought me some tea to make in our hotel room to help my throat. I was pretty miserable for the early part of Sunday :(


After another nap (hey! Naps are good!) we walked around some more and ended up at what ended up being my FAVORITE place for dinner. But before dinner, we did lots of shopping and we saw Peja Stojakovic (New Orleans hornets player) in the line in front of us at Cafe Du Monde.

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He was totally clean shaven which Jeff said was unusual for him... He was CUTE! :) After he ordered (at the to-go counter) he signed a hat for a kid and I loved watching it... he made that kid's day, which made me smile!! We ended up changing our mind about Cafe Du Monde at that time and found the dinner restaurant instead...

Sunday dinner:
Cafe Pontalba

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This little cafe is on a corner at Jackson Square and has walls of windows with a great view. We started off with popcorn shrimp...simple enough. Except it was amazing! Their breading was so dark golden and crispy, yum!!

For dinner I had a blackened tuna caesar salad. The tuna was perfectly cooked and tasty, and they put pecans pieces in their salad, and homemade garli bread croutons. Sooo good!
I got dessert here too, because I couldn't stop! I had a white chocolate bread pudding that was very tasty. I was so full that I couldn't eat it all, but I ate more of it than I should!
I can't even remember what Jeff had---I think it was something with crawfish so I didn't try it!!! :)

Sunday night was pretty low-key. We did lots of store shopping, and walking around on Canal Street being silly.


I got hungry again (from no lunch??) and had to try a lucky dog...

I got the sausage with onions and it hit the spot!!!

We knew that we wanted to get up early Monday, check out of the room and enjoy the full day we had left. I wanted to sleep and hope my throat would get better!


Monday we were up and out by 8:30. We moseyed back to Decatur for
Monday breakfast:

Cafe Du Monde

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We took a couple of orders of beignets to go (and I had to try their famous cafe au lait- half coffee, half hot milk) and walked up to eat on a bench on the Mississippi River. The weather was chilly but fine and the beignets were everything I had hoped for! Yum!!!

After breakfast we did the tourist thing and took a ride on a streetcar.

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The streetcar system was totally confusing to us, we ended up getting on one that just went right back to where we'd been walking for the past couple of days, and we gave up. But we enjoyed the ride!
We decided to hop into our rental car after that and do our own little tour.
(Canal St)

We drove through City Park, and then near the Lake Ponchatrain and saw lots of the devastation of Katrina. We saw plenty of brand new rebuilt houses, and plenty of the old ones marked for demolition. Those ones all had vegetation coming out of the gutters on the roofs...Crazy to think they had all been underwater!! (I also can't understand why they don't build the new ones up on blocks like you see in coast cities like Galveston....we saw a few new ones built up high like that but not many!)
We continued driving through the Garden District and past Tulane and Loyola universities. There are some big pretty houses over there, and we were amazed at how lush everything is...plants must love to grow in New Orlean's climate.

We headed back to the French Quarter and the River area for
Monday lunch:
Cafe Maspero
This restaurant was ok, we each had a huge sandwich (Pastrami for Jeff, roast beef and swiss for me)...

More walking! More shopping!!
We stopped in at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. for a beer. This place has a great upstairs and outside balcony with tables and chairs, would have been a fun place to eat!


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We had a few more hours to kill before time to catch our flight so we walked and walked and walked until it felt like deja vu,





Below, notice all the mardi gras beads all over the balcony and trees? That looks like one fun balcony! :)


...with a couple hours left, I wanted to check out the casino.

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This place was really nice. We only stayed for about an hour, spent $5 and left with $30! Guess we're not big gamblers, but that's a win, right??? haha!

We had a WONDERFUL trip and we are so lucky to have a wonderful family who jumped at the request to take care of our kiddos for a few days.
We missed them a lot and were ready to see them Monday night!

Happy 5 years to us!