Well New Orleans has been a blast! It got off to a rough start with our flight being 3 hours late! So instead of arriving at 1am we arrived at about 3.40am. Our plane was caught in bad weather in Boston with a freak low weather system working its way across the north and an unseasonal snowfall.
Consequently we got off to a late start on Sunday as we were catching up on some sleep, but jumped straight onto the Charles Ave Street Car, which runs right past our front door! It was absolutely chocker with standing room only, but was quote good as we ended up crammed right up the from with the driver. Amazing they still have all of the original controls on the cars, nothing modern at all!
We jumped off when we hit Canal Street and headed straight on to Bourbon. Within a few blocks we have found the Jazz Greats Park, which has a bar and Cafe in the middle. They had a jazz band playing right through the lunch hour, so we enjoyed some live jazz while we had lunch. We didn't realise that we were at one of the most well known cafes (Cafe Beignet) for making beignets.....which is apparently a must have dessert in New Orleans! So of course we had to try them. They are absolutely beautiful....and a lot of people enjoy them all over the city. You can't hide where you have eaten it as the tables and ground surrounding all of the places they are sold are covered in white powder!
There were so many buskers including tappers, full bands and artists lining the streets - there was a real carnival atmosphere through the whole area.
We had a bit of a wander through the French Quarter, and found our way to the Mississippi River where the Natchez is docked to suss it our for our river cruise that night. Its pretty brown, you certainly wouldn't want to fall in!
From there we jumped into one of the street cars that runs to the edge of the French Quarter and jumped off at the French Market. Its quite a good market....and we did a spot of shopping before exploring the food section with all of the Gator sticks and Swamp Dogs!
We found a wee bar beside the markets that was decked out with skeletons and other creepy stuff so we decided to head in for a beer to kill some time before our cruise. It was a very random bar, and all of the locals started piling in after work and ordering Bloody Mary's. They make them a little different here, with New Orleans Spiced Beans and Olives. The bar tender gave us some spiced beans to try as we didn't know what they were - they tasted a little like spicy gherkins.....extremely tasty!
We spent the evening aboard the Steamboat Natchez, where we cruised up the river and listened to a live Jazz Band - Dukes of Dixieland. They were fantastic! Dinner was a buffet of Cajun food, so we even got to try deep fried catfish - wasn't too bad. We saw the side that was hit during the hurricane - the devastation wasn't apparent in this area, but the actual area is 6 feet below sea level, so you can see in some of our pics how much they have built up the flood banks on the side of the river.
We got to enjoy the sunset on the boat, and got back to the dock around 9pm.
We hadn't had the time earlier in the day to check out Frenchmen Street (where all the jazz clubs are) so we headed there for a drink or two. We found a few outdoor markets covered in fairy lights in little garden areas and club after club of live music. We absolutely loved it, and even bought a CD from one of the bands that were playing!
We stopped in to another music club on the way back to Bourbon Street that was playing Country Music and enjoyed the last few sings of the set, then made our way back to the craziness of Bourbon Street to see what it was like at night. The one bar we decided to go in and have a drink turned out to be a gay bar! We didn't realise till we sat down and ordered that I was the only 'real' female in the bar, and they were playing all Dolly Parton videos with their arms around each other singing along ;) After the black guy sitting next to Logan got a little too friendly we moved on...LOL.
Today we had another good sleeping after a late night again last night, and headed out to the Bayou for an adventure on the swamp. We went out on an airboat to do some gator spotting - it is amazing how fast the boats go! Was quite nice as there were only 4 of us on our boat, and we saw quite a few American Alligators - one of them a 9-10 foot male! Unfortunately we didn't get to see any babies on our trip, but it was still great fun!
We are heading out for an early dinner tonight as we fly out to New York tomorrow. We are hoping that the bad weather in that area wont delay our flight as we have tickets for Chicago booked for tomorrow night! The forecast says it will be 4 degrees tomorrow in NYC and -4 during the night with a chance of snow on Saturday!
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