With two weeks of “pre-summer session” break to kill while Jonny studied for final exams, I convinced my family from California to meet me in New Orleans to play, eat, relax, and explore the beautiful and unique city. Originally, I chose New Orleans because the annual Physician Assistant conference was happening there during that week, and I thought it would be interesting to attend. However, when my parents and brother agreed to join me for the week, I decided that I would rather take advantage of the time I had with them and go to the conference another year.
Having not seen my family since January, I was elated to see my mom videotaping me as I rode the airport escalator down to baggage claim. I greeted my dad and younger brother shortly after, and the adventure began! Jonny and I drove through New Orleans during our cross-country road trip to Wisconsin last year, so I was excited to introduce my family to the culture and eccentricities of the city we had experienced.
Of course, it was a completely different trip with almost 7 days to explore and record-hitting mid-May temperatures, but here are some highlights of our trip (aka things we did in between taking shelter in air-conditioned shops, restaurants, and our hotel)!
Day 1 – Arrived in New Orleans and headed to dinner at Chef Ron’s Gumbo Stop for delicious gumbo, po-boys, and fried chicken (we ultimately decided that Chef Ron’s had the best fried shrimp of our trip!)
Day 2 – Ate beignets at Cafe du Monde (definitely better than donuts…), explored French Quarter/Jackson square, sampled the original Muffuletta at Central Grocery for lunch (yes, the four of us split 1 because it was huge!), Garden district walking tour, St. Charles streetcar ride, Wednesday at the Square concert at Lafayette Square
Day 3 – Toured Oak Alley Plantation for pretty much the whole day (it was surprisingly quite a tasteful presentation) and ate dinner at Heads and Tails so that my dad could finally get his oysters
Day 4 began quite normally with the quintessential swamp tour complete with mini-marshmallow feedings, swamp lore, and baby gator-holding. We ate a fried chicken lunch at Willie Mae’s Scotch House, walked around St. Louis cemetery #3 looking for the oldest dated tombstone in the hot, humid afternoon, napped in City Park, had coffee at Morning Call Coffee Stand….then proceeded to be stranded at said cafe for hours while a massive thunderstorm took place outside. Luckily we had a deck of cards and played the game “landlord” ad nauseam. Well, three of us played. My dad was outside trying to take storm pictures pretty much the whole time. It was probably close to 6pm when the storm let up slightly and we made a break for it. Just on the short drive to dinner and back to the hotel, we saw multiple roads closed, flooding in side streets, and people pushing their cars through the transiently formed lakes. It was a frightening reality check about the conditions the New Orleanians faced each year throughout the long hurricane season that hadn’t even officially started yet.
Day 5 – Caught a ferry to Algiers point for the sake of riding the ferry (the same ferry that was in the movie DeJa Vu), visited the Jazz Museum (which surprisingly didn’t have a lot of Jazz-related exhibits in it), walked down Bourbon street as it was getting crazy, listened to some live jazz at Musical Legends Park, ate a very fried dinner at Rivershack Tavern and very hard to make our food last long enough to hear the live band that started at 9pm. This was the day that my mom and I swore off fried foods for the remainder of the vacation.
Day 6 – Attended a small, multi-ethnic Southern baptist church in Kenner, then visited the Bayou Boogaloo music festival that was happening that weekend. Played cards, watched people with their floaties, got bit by an ant, and randomly ran into the only two people I know in New Orleans! Enjoyed a crawfish/shrimp boil platter for dinner!
Day 7 – Though we spent the whole day at the World War II museum, we literally only got through 1.5 of the 4 buildings that had exhibits. It was a really engaging museum, even for someone who doesn’t consider themselves very educated on the details war history. We had our last dinner at Chef Ron’s Gumbo Stop, but alas, Sno-La, the cheesecake stuffed snowball place next door (that we had been talking about going to all week) had recently closed for construction! On the bright side, my brother and I finally beat “Overcooked” that night after many nights of hard work!
I had an amazing time in New Orleans with my family, but I was thoroughly stuffed and ready to go home to my hard-at-studying husband.
grablifebythehorngs 