New Orleans! (in picture form)
9:41 PMAs promised, New Orleans in picture form!
This is the view from the plane as we crossed some state, I have no idea which one, but it's a state. Anyway, they have cool circular plots and I thought it was interesting.
After our insane trip over to New Orleans, we spent the night wandering Bourbon and ate at Oceana restaurant where I had a fantastic bayou duck with Jambalaya. It was soooo delicious! Then we wandered le Bourbon and had hurricanes, hand grenades, pink flamingo shots, beer, and a multitude of other things. We also wandered into a voodoo shop and Matt got a power/influence/strength/something or another voodoo-y bracelet and a little ceramic dog that's supposed to protect...something? I have no idea..
Friday morning: We had to wake up at 7:30 in order to be ready for the hotel pick up for a swamp tour. Matt was insanely hung over, I was only mildly hung over. Haha.
Anyway, when we got out to the middle of nowhere, we got into our boats which were parked next to this bridge on the Pearl River. The bridge used to be the only way in and out of New Orleans and sometimes goes up and down to let boats in, but you need to give the bridge a 4 hours notice because it takes that long to open.
We saw lots of alligators too! They like marshmallows and hot dogs, especially hot dogs on a stick
Look at him jump for the hot dog!
We also passed the houses of people who live on the water in a place called Indian Village. It was full of some unique characters... we chatted with a guy who showed us a turtle shell and was drinking Crown Royal at 10am...This was not his sign, but it's a cultural highlight
(read it with the line as a comma)
Beignets and chicory coffee
For dinner, we went back the other direction towards Canal to eat at Acme Oyster House. This was the line when we got there at maybe 8?
That's a lot of people..
But we had beer to hold us over
This was our master shucker Hollywood. He was really interesting to talk to. We had a dozen fresh oysters and a dozen barbecued oysters along with a couple of po'boys. Way too much food, should have just stuck with the fresh oysters
On Sunday we went to Jackson Square and walked around before grabbing the trolley to Canal Street in order to eat at Cochon Butcher. Really good lunch of duck sliders, bacon melt, sweet and spicy brisket sliders and some roasted brussel sprouts (because we've had way too much meat up to now...)
We returned via trolley and went to visit the flea market/French Market where we bought some coasters and wandered until we found live music at the Gazebo Cafe. We also stopped by The Organic Banana in the Farmer's Market and ordered up a cajun iced team (rum and sweet ice tea) and a mango rum smoothie thing. I found that I don't like the drinks on Bourbon Street since they're all way too sweet for me. We found much better drinks almost everywhere else in the French Quarter.
On the way back to our hotel, we found a dog who was barking at us through the garage door. He was cute so I took a picture, I think we stayed too long and instigated him too much though
After a quick nap, we went back down towards Bourbon to go on our walking ghost tour of the French Quarter. We saw a parade as we were waiting. Apparently people hire these bands to celebrate engagements and weddings and so on. We saw an entire wedding party following a parade like this one
It was a pretty long tour, but we got a bar break at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop where they have hurricanes made with REAL fruit juice, white rum and 151 on top
Bourbon Street (that's our tour guide with the red hair)
On the tour we passed by Delphine Lalaurie's house in the French Quarter. The story is pretty gruesome so if you get queasy...don't read it. It's like Hostel and Saw and the Human Centipede rolled into one (movies I'm proud to say I NEVER watched)
Saturday's dinner took us down to Frenchman Street where we ate at The Three Muses bar and listened to some live music. My feet were KILLING me at this point and it was painful to stand for a few minutes at a time. They still hurt, all that walking was really painful...I bitched and I moaned but I was in a lot of pain! At least we had the sense to take a cab home instead of walking back, I might have just sat down and given up if we hadn't...
Anyway, we had a fantastic dinner with mac n cheese, chicken flatbread, crawfish turnovers, feta fries, duck confit spring rolls, pork belly, and finished it off with a peanut butter and chocolate brownie! No pictures, we inhaled it all before it hit the table
Sunday was spent wandering down to Jackson Square again and grabbing lunch at the Crescent City Brewery. We had fresh oysters, crab stuffed shrimp and sausage along with some beers. It was nice and breezy and sunny. Perfect day!
We wandered around the French Quarter some more just kinda passing the time...toured the Louisiana State Museum that had a lengthy and depressing display on Katrina and it's aftermath. It made me feel stupid for being so caught up in my life to help out back then..
(Edit: I almost totally forgot! We had the fried shrimp po-boy as an "afternoon snack" at Johnny's Po-boys which is pretty famous for their po-boys. Really good and Matt got an embarassing picture of me being a total fat kid stuffing this gigantic sandwich into my face. I admit it, I know how to look sexy)
We also found some bars, looked at some menus, laughed at the cleverness on display
Beer taps at Turtle Bay Bar
Sunday night's dinner was at a little place named Buffa's Bar/restaurant where we listened to live music and watched an episode of Treme on HBO. They screened the show there and we enjoyed some big burgers, fries and beers while hanging out with the locals
It was a fun trip to celebrate turning 26 with lots of fantastic food, great weather and really nice people. However, now back to the real world and school...guess I'll have to console myself with a massage on Friday :)
0 comments