Days in New Orleans

 Megan and I got the opportunity to take a long weekend away - just the two of us. We still had some value left from American Airlines moving us to a later flight from Las Vegas. Neither of us had ever been to New Orleans so we were off. We arrived here.

We stayed here - It was great with breakfast and dinner each day

We got on this

We saw things like this once but the photos are from our first jaunt around town on the Double Decker bus.

Mostly we were up top but the A/C was below

We arrived at St. Louis cathedral named after Louis IV who was king of France from 1226 to 1270 - not name after the city.

I took a picture with Andrew Jackson

And then I saw the beautiful woman in the park - we struck up a conversation

We began walking in the French Quarter

Listened to jazz band

We ate beignets which I found to be more authentic but less wonderful than the ones at Port Orleans at Disney World

We ended up eating at this restaurant for lunch by mistake. I misunderstood the instructions from the concierge at the hotel - still we loved it. And we did eat at the restaurant we intended to eat at later in our stay.

For the evening meal we found world famous Acme Oyster House. I don't eat oysters but the other seafood was great as well.

The next day we went to the World War II museum. We expected it to be good but it was literally great. We could have spent multiple days in there.

The museum is on two sides of the street. The first side is all about D-day. The whole reason that the World War 2 museum  is in New Orleans is because it was first the D-day museum and the reason that the D-day museum was there is because New Orleans was where the Higgins boats were manufactured. These were the boats that were used to ferry troops to the shore.

Across the street were all of the other exhibits for many facets of WWII including:

Aircraft

Monument Men

We rode the trolley back to Canal Street - not far from out hotel

This morning we took at walking tour of some historic areas of town.

Our tour finished and we walked until we found lunch

You can always count on Fried Chicken - No matter where you are

We went downtown to experience some since of nightlife. I guess we are getting to old because it was just too loud - there was no way to have a conversation there but we did love the atmosphere other than that.

The next day we signed up for a haunted New Orleans tour. We were a little early so we found Louis Armstrong park across the street.

We went to various places with a haunted past.

We learned that the water table dictates that a lot of the burials are above ground. What we did not know is that these tombs get very hot inside and that bodies are naturally cremated. Each of these tombs have been used many many times - not just for one person.

A hospital abandoned during Katrina that has been empty since (said to be haunted) has been recently purchased but is now bogged down in bureaucracy - empty so far for 19 years.

This is the floor of the hospital where the patients to were not or could not be transported in hurricane Katrina died. There were 13 or so of them. Interestingly this hospital was not flooded - just abandoned and all of the patients ran out of medications and electricity and the staff had left as they were ordered to. So they died, not from Katrina, but by neglect - No wonder they are said to still haunt these halls.

Today we went to Mardi Gras World where many of the floats are made for the Mardi Gras parades.

This is one of the floats that mostly just carries people.

We recognize an old friend far from home.

It was great to have time together- just us. This a discipline we developed early in our journey together and we have pretty much been able to do this once a year to grow together.