New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans is somewhere we have talked about going to for a while. Laurel spent a lot of time there with her cousin Sam after high school. She always said that someday we should go down there for a weekend, well this was someday!

French Quarter RV Park – It’s walking distance to the French Quarter. It’s expensive, but I repeat, it’s a 5 minute walk to the french quarter. It’s surrounded by 8 foot walls topped with razor wire, but we felt safe inside and out the whole time. It has a great pool and hot tub area, we met some great people while lounging in the pool on Sunday. I would stay here again in a heartbeat. It’s also right behind an abandoned supermarket, but that supermarket was used as a location on the HBO show ‘Treme’, so I consider that a plus.

Southern Decadence – We didn’t plan to come to here for any festival. For us this was just a long weekend, but it turns out that it’s the date of the 3rd largest gay festival in the US. There were crowds of shirtless men everywhere on Bourbon street they were all very nice to us straight folk and were happy that we weren’t afraid to mingle with them. We met a great couple at the RV park that gave us a lot of good food reccommendations. And on Sunday night we met 3 guys that gave us VIP passes to a burlesque show, it was great!

Bourbon Street – It would take too much time to describe all the places we went, so I’ll lump them all into one section. I don’t know what I expected this place to be like, I think I had more of a sanitized, Disney-esque vision in my head. In reality it’s a dirty place that smells like garbage and has expensive drinks. But once you get a few of those drinks in you it becomes like a old familiar coat, one that you can were while drinking a 32 ounce frozen hurricane in the streets. Can I get that in a go-cup?

Here’s some quick places we visited

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop – The first night we just ended up here because it was at the opposite end of Bourbon Street from where we started. It seemed old, but in the same way that any basement bar in DC seems old. But the second night, when we started at this end of the street we realized that it’s much, much older. It’s been continuously operating as a bar in that location since 1722. In Europe this may happen all the time, but in the USA it’s a pretty big deal.  There was a piano in the back where everyone was gathered around listening to covers of Backstreet Boys and Elton John, because they know their audience!

Ignatius Eatery – I make special mention of this place because it did not seem to be getting the ‘Brunch Love’ that some of the other restaurants in the Garden District were. But it had the best food and service we had in our whole time in NOLA. The shrimp and grits were out of this world. Every bite was better than the last. We had a very nice time here and will try to come back for dinner when we are here again.

The Schus had a very nice long weekend in NOLA. It was a good way to let off steam from the stress of traveling at this pace. We will  be back and next time we’ll see some more music!

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Comments

One response to “New Orleans, Louisiana”

  1. ShelleySchu Avatar
    ShelleySchu

    I want to go back to New Orleans soon. If you ever go back, I will drive down with my friend Christi who is a NOLA native. She can be our tour guide while we sample all of the finest food and drink to our hearts content. 🙂

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