New Orleans 2019

So way back at the beginning of November, the Husband and I took a jaunt down to N'awlins.  We were inspired to visit partly because a co-worker spoke highly of the area, and in part due to advertisement on PBS for St. Tammany Parish as sponsors for Kevin Belton's New Orleans cooking show. Our resort was actually in St. Tammany Parish, so we spent the majority of our time bouncing around the area north of Lake Pontchartrain (thank heaven's for spell check!), which is known as the "North Shore". An absolutely lovely area!

So the trip in review:

Friday we had a 7am flight, a leisurely but not overly long layover in Minneapolis, and landed in NOLA about 1p. In a BRAND NEW airport. Like it opened two days before we arrived brand new! All shiny and modern and open and where the heck do we go for luggage and transportation...? Got the rental car and headed north across the Lake Pontchartrain causeway. Checked in at 4p exactly and called it a day.

Saturday - we went into Covington to check out the farmers market and a HUGE art show (Three Rivers Art Show). Picked up some tasty food, wandered through the talls, and then headed back to the unit to watch the second half of Penn St vs MN football game (Gophers won!). Went for a walk late afternoon 'cause when it's 70* and sunny you just have to get outside.

Covington, LA

Sunday - we changed our plans due to a pending cold front coming through later in the week and went on a swamp tour.  So cool! So different from our swamps! Didn't see any alligators tho - I guess they started hibernating. Found a place for lunch, went back to Covington to walk the Tammany Trace Trail (like our Munger) and wandered the art show a bit more.

Honey Island Swamp

view from Tammany Trace Trail

Monday - New Orleans day! We headed in early (not early enough to beat rush hour, ugh), found parking, found breakfast, then went to the WWII museum. It's an incredible and overwhelming experience. They broke the exhibit into two parts - European theater and the Pacific Theater. We started with the European theater, came out two hours and we both went "I need a break". So we wandered all around the French Quarter.It's like....Las Vegas and Savanna had a love child and created NOLA. Unlike anything I've visited to date. We called it quits about 430p and survived rush hour getting back north.

It just dawned on me, none of my pictures from inside the museum turned out. What the heck..?!?

Palace Restaurant - lovely breakfasts

French Quarter

Tuesday dawned to 35* rain with a very blustery wind. A 40* temperature difference from Monday! Ugh. But at least it wasn't the -6* back home!  The plan was to do a plantation tour, but the one I picked out wasn't open on Tuesday.  Drat and bother. We ended up at the Houmas House plantation and lunch at Cafe Burnside. Probably one of the best meals we had in NOLA was at this cafe.

quirky and fun art

Wed - wandered St. Louis Cemetery #3 (open, clean, good neighborhood, no "tour" required), made our way to Central Market and Deli for a muffletta, ate said muffletta in Jefferson Square, then wandered to find a 2nd Cafe du Monde for tea and binets where we ended up in an outlet mall on the river. They don't have tea (who doesn't have tea?!?)and nope, I decided I'm not wild about binets. Wandered back to the car and called it a day. Oh, we stopped at Abita Springs brewery on the way back and enjoyed a flight which I enjoyed more than the binet.

Thursday - hung out at the unit. Lunch was BBQ (really good BBQ!) in Covington. Went in quest of a Starbucks so I could use their internet (a work thing cropped up). Ate the last of our food stuff for supper while doing laundry that evening and packed.

Fri - 230am wake-up. At the rental return by 430a. At the airport by 5a. Small line at luggage check but once Delta had more than one worker-bee the line moved right along. Significant line through security - but it too moved right along. 30 minutes to spare before boarding started at 650a - alas, not enough time to grab breakfast.  We were on the ground by 1pm and spend a couple hours catching up with my Folks (and picking up the pups from boarding).

Overall impressions - we really enjoyed the area north of Lake Pontchartrain (Covington, Abita Springs), and the WWII museum, the plantation tour and the swamp tour.

NOLA/French Quarter itself...mmm. Not so much - I quickly became tired of people trying to sell me something or entice me into their establishment, the homeless on every corner accosting the tourists for money, we struggled to navigate to things of interest (GPS wasn't working the best in the close quarters). The French Quarter (much like it's "parent" Las Vegas) knows how to part you from your money which becomes very annoying. The Husband didn't care for how the place smelled (grease/garbage from all the restaurants out on the very cramped streets,homeless population, hashish, urine all with undertones of musty mildew probably from the sewers).

Would we go back? Probably, but we would skip NOLA itself and spend more time in greater Louisiana, maybe even a trip to Baton Rouge.