New Orleans, Louisiana

We stayed at the New Orleans Guest House, just outside the french quarter, but easy walking distance to everything in the French Quarter. We managed to do most of the touristy things in New Orleans. One of the neatest bars we went to was Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar. It’s the oldest structure to be used as a bar in the USA (since the early 1700’s). Bonus, they had eggnog slurpees with whipped cream on top.

We’ve noticed that the defining and unique dish of a place is never even somewhat healthy. This holds in New Orleans as well. We had gumbo, jambalaya, chicory coffee, beignets, and fried po’ boys – twice. And it’s all amazing.

Besides stuffing ourselves, we walked all through the French Quarter and much of the neighboring warehouse/arts district. We took advantage of New Orleans relaxed open container regulations and got Miami Vices to go. We really enjoyed the feel and pace of life in New Orleans (at least during this time of year). It’s a really beautiful city.

On a whim, we decided to tour the Insectarium. Surprisingly, it was mostly retired people in the middle of a day on a weekday, not kids. To really tire ourselves out, we wandered around City Park, through the sculpture garden to the Singing Oak. It’s wonderful to sit underneath, as it’s full of chimes tuned to play scaled chords.

Priscilla, just chilling with her sculpture friends.

Andy was fascinated by the mausoleum cemeteries that are a major tourist draw in New Orleans. Priscilla just thought it was creepy.

Probably our favorite part of New Orleans was actually visiting the nearby Jean Lafitte National Historic Park. There’s a ~4 mile round trip boardwalk which traverses swamps and marshes. We did the ‘naturalist crawl’ of about 0.5 mph pace. We saw dwarf palmettos, spanish-moss-draped-live oaks, cypress, snakes, frogs, squirrels, raccoons, birds, and anoles. When it’s warmer out, there are apparently a bunch of alligators also. If we lived in this area, we’d be regulars.