We arrived at 11 am and took a cab to our hotel in the French Quarter; our hotel was a little French place called Place D’Ames Hotel. Seriously… I felt like we were in Europe. All of the buildings in the French quarter have open aired hallways and court yards, as did our hotel.
We went to lunch at Bubba Gumps and the waiters were way friendly and chatty. They even pulled up a chair to talk with us and quiz us on our Forest Gump trivia (which isn’t much). We took a bus tour of the city. It went all over the place. We some Katrina damage, went to an above the ground cementery, went to the city park which is really old and has these trees that grow crazy things on them and I recognized a bridge in the movie Benjamin Button, drove by lots of cool New Orleans homes, saw Tulane, Xavier and some other schools… it was a really great tour. We were a bit nervous and felt out of place and didn’t know where to start so the tour was perfect to get a good over view of everything. We got to see a lot of the city and we learned a lot too. You know how back in the day family fortunes and businesses were passed onto the oldest son, well in the Creole culture of New Orleans the family fortune and businesses are passed onto the child that shows the most intelligence and promise. Well, girls usually develop and mature before boys so a lot of the fortunes were passed onto women in the past. Weird uh?
We then walked down Bourbon Street. Umm… that was an experience. I’m glad to check that off the list of things to do in life, but I’m ok if I never do again. There were a lot of people approaching you to eat or shop or give them tips for whatever talent they are featuring. There were several clubs of unsavory nature, but apparently we didn’t fit the clientele and I’m ok with that. We did get stopped by one man dressed as a policeman and he gave us a ticket for being too cute, not partying hard enough and for guys watching us.
After that we took off to find some dinner. We had heard that Frechman Street had a lot of cool live jazz clubs that served dinner. It was getting dark and we were getting a little creeped out by the streets (a lot of homeless people, drunk people, dark alleys, etc) and we couldn’t find a club that we liked… luckily we made our way back to the French Quarter and ate a little pizza place. While we ate dinner we googled pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina’s house and went and found it (or at least like to think we did)! Then we went to the famous Café Du Mode (café of the world) where they sale beignets (ben-yays) and got them for dessert! The café is open 24/7 and the beignets are these delicious scones with about a half cup of powdered sugar in the bag with them. Yummo! The dangerous thing… the café was only a block from the hotel… we knew where we were going to stop on a frequent basis.
The next morning we ate breakfast in the sunroom of the hotel! We then took the old historic trolley to the garden district where all the really nice houses are. (History on Garden District: this wealthy plantation owner once owned the garden district but then he cheated on his wife… several times. So in the divorce the judge said that the husband had to give his wife half of his riches but the husband didn’t have any money, just land, so the judge made him give his best land to his wife. Well she took it and then sold it in pieces and ended up being worth 3x her husband) We did some more celeb-estalking (celebrity real-estate stalking) and found Sandra Bullock’s house. We walked on Magazine Street and nearly perished in the heat! We walked Royal Street (a more sophisticated street in the French Quarter) and I found this awesome designer hat shop! I wanted to buy all of the hats! We tried gumbo and jambalaya for lunch… tasty but not something I would crave.
We walked around Jackson square and there was an awesome band playing in the square. People were playing jazz music all over New Orleans but this bad was legit.
We explored the French market and flee market and then went back to our courtyard to take a break. We met some old people from Florida and we now have an invitation to stay at Hammock Island in St. Augustine Florida. Bob with a B invited us to their home.
We ate dinner at the Market Grill and the jazz band took a break and came and sat by us. The saxophonist has a daughter in Pocatello and he chatted a bit about Mormons. Nice guy. He told us to be careful twice when we left. We walked around some more, went through an art gallery, peeked again at Bourbon Street at night and remembered why it was a bit too much. And then we ended the night back in our delightful courtyard feeling the warmth and humidity that symbolizes the meaning of vacation. Next morning we flew home!
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