Wednesday, July 27
Grabbed some breakfast in the condo this morning before we headed out. Went to the concierge’s desk to get some ideas on how to best cover New Orleans in one day! We decided to do a 3-hour bus tour (“Adventures in New Orleans”) that would pick us up at our resort at 1:30. So we hustled and walked all the way to the French Market trying to find a place (The Chicken Coop) that the concierge suggested for lunch.
After walking for probably 30 minutes, we gave up and headed back. (One more block and we’d have found it) We decided to eat at Huck Finn’s and had a great lunch there instead! Kim had the shrimp po’ boy and I went for the “Taste of New Orleans”: a bowl of gumbo, jambalaya, and a bowl of crawfish etouffee’. I have had these before, but not as authentic as this–or as spicy!
New Orleans seems a lot cleaner than I thought it would be. We basically stayed on one street — Decatur Street –between our resort and the French Market. We saw a lot of places we wanted to check out, but we would be left behind if we didn’t get back in time for the tour bus.
The bus showed up right at 1:30. We were the first riders. She stopped at a few other hotels in the areas and then headed to the office so we could pay for our tour. She took us all over New Orleans giving us history and all kinds of tidbits of information and trivia along the way. It was interesting to see where the levees are…to find out how all this was SUPPOSED to work…to see the water lines on some of the homes from when Katrina hit…
and to visit a cemetary. (Saint Louis Cemetary #3) Now this was interesting and kinda disturbing at the same time. You have a family mausoleum in the cemetary. A coffin must be in this mausoleum for a year and one day before another one can be added. When a second coffin needs to be entered, they will break down the original one, move the contents of the coffin to the back area of the crypt floor, remove and dispose of the coffin, and then add the new coffin. Some of these mausoleums have places for more than 12 coffins at once.
We went to City Park which is larger than Central Park in New York City. We stopped at a café’ here (The Morning Call Cafe–open 24 hours) and got beignets (and a diet coke!) Oh. My. Goodness. These were totally amazing. Tim and I split one order of 3 beignets. I bet there was probably an extra 1/3 cup of powdered sugar poured into the paper sack they came in. Oh so warm, sweet, and delicious!!!
After the tour, we headed upstairs to our condo for about an hour to rest before we hiked back to the French Market area. We went to Café du Monde, but not for additional beignets….we went for squashed pennies!!!
We checked out a lot of the cool stores that are along this street. Went into a Jazz Funeral Store (the name was just too interesting to pass up).
Was looking around inside there and I was actually standing right beside another penny machine that Tim had to point out to me. Concentrating too much on t-shirts I guess!
Supper tonight was at Café Maspero. Tim had a muffaletta. (I did not expect this–piled high with mortadella, salami, mozzarella, ham, and provalone and then covered in an olive salad, served on a muffaletta roll–yum!) I ended up with a burger since I had seafood at lunch. Probably should have had seafood a second time….it sure did look good coming by some tables close to us!
Got back to the unit around 10pm and are settling down for the night. All good things must come to an end….and tonight is the last night of our grand adventure tour across the United States. Tomorrow is going to be a long ride home….
I wonder if Jazmine (our dog) is going to recognize us?!?