Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler

We spent a lovely couple of days in New Orleans during our spring break.  As I was planning out this trip, I was asked several times why we chose New Orleans as our destination.  There are several reasons for this choice: 1) It's far away enough to justify "traveling" there, but not so far that we'd have to spend a lot of time getting there  2) We've never been there before  3) Staying there is not terribly expensive  4) It was listed as a "top 10 city for families" by Family Vacation Critic and is listed as one of the "500 places to take your kids before they grow up"  and finally  5) Olivia has been asking to go to New Orleans for nearly two years now (thank you, Tiana).  Our vacation was a Monday-Friday vacation with Monday and Friday being our "travel" days.  The other three days were spent exploring the city. Even though our vacation was family friendly, we do have some of the same stories that the typical N'awlins revelers have.  We walked down Bourbon Street, someone in our family took their shirt off in the French Quarter, and someone else ended up puking on the side of the road in the French Quarter.  As you will see, though, our stories are not nearly as exciting (?) as they sound.

Our hotel was located in the lower garden district.  This was a nice area of town.  The hotel room was cool because it had a spiral staircase that led up to a loft.  The kids liked that they got to sleep upstairs in their own little area.  Another good feature of the hotel was that it was located one block away from the St. Charles Streetcar stop.  We purchased 3-day passes for the city transportation system on our first morning in NOLA and used streetcars and buses to get around for the duration of our trip.  I really like riding on the streetcars because you don't see these in many places.  They are also very convenient.

One of our must-see stops was the St. Louis Cathedral.  Naturally, Olivia knew the historical importance of this building.  This is where Prince Naveen of Maldonia exchanged wedding vows (again) with Princess Tiana.  Olivia is an expert in all things Princess and the Frog and was excited to see things that are in the movie.

Another interesting thing that we did was to take a carriage ride around the French Quarter.  Olivia was asked to sit up front and help drive the carriage. She liked this special attention.  We did this on our first day in the city and it was a good introduction to the layout and history of the area.

New Orleans is full of excellent food.  One of the things on our "to do" list was to have beignets at Cafe du Monde.  We beat the crowds one morning and enjoyed this delicious (but messy) treat.  The food is definitely one of the distinctive things about New Orleans.   Brian loves cajun and creole cooking, so he was in culinary heaven all week long.

So here is a picture of our walk down Bourbon Street.  We didn't want to chance walking down this infamous street at night, so we walked down during the day.  To be more precise, we took our stroll in the early morning.  Whatever reputation this street has at night time, I will have you know that it is extremely tame at 9 a.m. We were almost the only people up and about.  I did see many many bars, but they were all closed.  Yep, this is our Bourbon street story.  I told you it wasn't exciting.









And here's our puking / taking shirt off story....  One of the things that I absolutely wanted to do was to see the jazz band play at Preservation Hall.  They play three shows a night- at 8, 9, and 10.  Our first attempt to see the show was on Tuesday night.  We got in line at 7:30 to try and get into the 8 o'clock show.  When eight o'clock arrived we waited to get in only to find that we were six people away from being let in (the show sold out).  The guy at the door said that we would be in the front if we wanted to wait for the nine o'clock show.  The kids seemed to be in decent spirits, so we decided to wait it out.  We stood there for another hour.  Finally, nine o'clock arrived, the previous show let out.  We were near the front of the line and were excited because we were going to have great seats.  Brian picked Olivia up because she was feeling tired when all of a sudden she threw up all over him.  This totally came out of the blue.  She had not felt bad all day.  Naturally we were not going to go into the show after this.  Owen started crying right there in the middle of the street because he really wanted to go in.  Brian's shirt took a lot of damage, so I ducked into a gift shop to buy him a new one (which he changed into right there in the middle of the sidewalk).  It was so weird that this happened because Olivia was fine after this- no trouble from her for the rest of the week.

Not to be deterred, we returned to Preservation Hall on our last night to try and see the show.  This time we were successful.  We got in, but we had to stand.  Preservation Hall is a no-frills joint.  There is a room with six chairs for the musicians, a few benches for the audience, and a little bit of room to stand.  Brian and I ended up holding the kids for the entire set so that they could see.  They were heavy and the room was crowded- but it was totally worth dealing with all that to see the show.  The band was so good.  This was probably my favorite experience of all in New Orleans.

At this point you may think that I am done talking about N'awlins.  Well, I'm not.  I'm probably going to do a few more posts about the trip.  Right now, though, I am going to attach a short video clip of a jazz band playing in Jackson Square.  They were pretty good so I gave Olivia a dollar to put in their hat.  Well, Owen saw me do that and wanted to put a dollar in, too.  Brian gave him a dollar and this video shows what happened.  I call this video "Owen changes his mind".