Road Trip: South - Capitals Tour
Day 4: Saturday, May 20, 2017 - New Orleans, LA
Weather: Hot. 93° and humid.
Steps: 13,212 (Steve); 12,951 (Linda)
Drove: 25 miles
Though we have been to a number of nice cities during our adventures, New Orleans is the only city we've returned to and stayed at more than once (for a vacation). As of this writing, at least...
We woke to another continental breakfast. We consider this a regular continental as there were hard boilded eggs, doughnuts, bagels, yogurt, cereal and a few other items avaiable.
After our breakfast, we headed to our first destination of this city - the
Confederate Memorial Hall (aka the Civil War Museum [aka the
Northern Agression Museum]). Since the museum didn't open until 10:00 local time, we took our time to get there. The
parking lot had a minimum of four hours of parking. So we sat in the car in the lot for about twenty minutes to chat
while we waited for the museum to open - and to pay for the parking (it was self metered pay at the kiosk style).
Across the street from the parking lot was the museum, the oldest museum in Louisiana.
And the architecture shows it.
While there were quite a few artifacts to see, including weapons and uniforms, we were there for just an hour and a half.
These are buttons. There were buttons from about 40 different states. Delaware was not one of them.
While viewing the items in the museum, there was a child of about four there with his father. He was frequently
singing out "E-I-E-I-O". That's it. Not the whole song, just "E-I-E-I-O". It was
cute for the first ten minutes or so, but then it started getting tiring.
Since it was so early and we had time on the meter, we walked to our lunch destination - which was all the way in the
heart of the French Quarter - a nice 18 or so block walk. While walking to the restaurant, we came across a small
park that had a statue of Benjamin Franklin.
When we hit the edge of the French Quarter, the crowds seemed to immediately increase in size 10-fold. And the noise with it. From reviews, we were going to dine at The Gumbo Shop. This was the first (that greek meal on the first day doesn't count [we feel that our tour hadn't officially started yet]), and hopefully last, meal that we did not get any pictures of. For an appetizer, we shared a bowl of shrimp gumbo. For our entree, Linda had the shrimp remoulade and I had the jambalaya.
While in the restaurant, I looked at my cell phone and said to Linda "Any minute now we can start to get a parking ticket." The phone read 1:58 PM with the meter ending about 2:00 PM. We finished eating, paid our bill and made our way all the way back to the car. When we got there and I started up the car, the car's clock showed 1:34. I looked at my phone, it displayed 2:34 on the home screen. I entered the phone to find it showed 1:34. For some stupid reason, the home screen was still on the home time (it eventually adjusted itself). Here we were thinking we were late, but we wound up being early.
Anyway, we made our way to the next location: Longue Vue House and Gardens.
They prohibited photographs while on the house tour. These shots, which include some artwork that was on display,
may or may not have been taken before or after I did or did not hear about the picture taking being or not being permitted
in the house. Besides, these weren't taken in the house, they were of the inside of the house (a similar thing may
or may not have happened at Montecello two years prior).
There were a couple neat features of the house as well. For example, there was a door jamb button switch,
on the hinge side, that acted like a fridge light - open the door and the light inside goes on automatically.
Also, at one time all the clock inside the house were all mechanically connected to a central clock in the attic.
If you needed to adjust the time, you only had to do it to the one clock in the attic.
The grounds were really nice.
The gardens were interesting. Not nearly as lavish as the Bellingrath house, but gardens we wouldn't mind having
at our house nonetheless. The first flower was an odd looking thorned thing.
We saw what we needed to see and it was still a little early. The docent mentioned the city park. It turns out there is a large park on the north side of the city. We drove to it to look around. There was a festival of some kind going on so we decided not to stay.
We went back to the room for a quick nap before dinner (all this driving and walking gets tiring...). We
drove down to the French Quarter again, with our sites on a location on Bourbon Street called
NOLA Po' Boys. We parked one block over on Royal,
in a spot that we later found out was permit only - but not because we got a ticket, but because we saw signs the
next day. Linda had the fried oyster po' boy on a bun and I had a 6" barbeque shrimp po' boy.
After our meal we walked down Bourbon Street. While Bourbon Street is known for its party atmosphere
during the Mardi Gras period, it is still quite the happening place (may not look too much like it here, but
it was still early). And there are quite a few characters present as well.
We didn't witness any ladies earning their beads this trip as we had in the past (for those not accustomed to the bead-earning
rite, if a woman flashes herself to people [usually men on the balconies yelling to them], said people on the balconies
throw them beads), there was quite a crowd about. Here are two ~10 second clips put together of some of the crowd.
The street performers were also out in force.
We walked around for about an hour, saw people and heard some music. I thought you might like this
particular clip because it shows the juxtiposition of the two live bands across the street from each other.
Bourbon Street is loaded with bars with live music. A lot of New Orleans is loaded with bars and live music.
The sky started to look ominous so we headed back to the car. Within a few feet of the car, it started to lightly drizzle. Within a couple minutes of getting back in the car, it started to pour. We drove back to the hotel in the rain and it proceeded to rain well into the night - after we went to sleep.
This was the first night of the trip - and the only night of our trip - that we didn't travel to another city before or after dinner. So it was wine time. We relaxed some and then went to sleep.
FUN FACT: The Longue Vue home has been used in movies and TV shows including American Horror: Freak Show and NCIS: New Orleans.