withoutwhatifs

Derek and I went back and forth on whether we would visit New Orleans. Neither of us had been before, but he had heard from people who had that it wasn’t the safest place and that if you wandered outside of the French Quarter, it gets sketchy real fast. Not that I disagreed with this, but the way I see it, if you are street-smart and careful, then you’ll be fine pretty much anywhere. It’s usually people who aren’t well-traveled, or drunk and being stupid, or a combination of the two, that find themselves in bad situations. So we went back and forth about it. But then my good friend SarahCho (one word) reached out to us, saying she wanted to fly out to meet us somewhere while we were on this road trip. and suggested New Orleans. And that settled it. We were on our way to New Orleans.

We drove the 8 hours from Dallas (after having spent Halloween trick or treating with our nephew Thayer), cutting through most of Louisiana, which consisted a lots of cotton fields and waterways, with one stop for lunch in Natchitoches (pronounced Nack-a-tish…but we wouldn’t learn that until we had already been saying it like Not-your-toe-cheese for awhile). We had lunch at a place on the river, while Murph was smothered with Southern affection from the waitresses, and had to embarrassingly ask what a Po Boy was. We had both heard the term before but really didn’t know what it meant, and all the menu had all different kinds of po boys, so we had to ask. Our waitress laughed and sweetly said she had never been asked that before. Turns out a po-boy is a sandwich.

We got into New Orleans pretty late that night, which worked out well since Sarah and Vinny’s flight didn’t get in until late too, so we settled into the AirBnb we had rented off of Magazine street, which ended up being a great area to stay. Bars, restaurants and shops line the length of Magazine, which is just a walk away from the Garden District’s beautiful homes with traditional Louisiana architecture, the old above-ground Lafayette cemetery, and a short street car/trolley ride into the French Quarter.

Our first full day, we had brunch on Magazine at the Red Dog Diner before heading further into town. The food was amazing and the bloody mary’s were even better.

We even ordered a couple bloodies for the road- because you can literally order drinks to go everywhere in New Orleans. Oh and you can brings dogs everywhere, so the city was already a winner in our books. Next up, we headed into the French Quarter, and after a few more drinks (yes, this was a trend during our time in New Orleans, but it’s highly encouraged so hey, if you can’t beat em) and a stop along the Mississippi River, we stopped at Cafe du Monde to sample their infamous beignets. They were delish. Derek just kept saying, “It’s just fried dough.” But this was even better than fried dough.

After walking around the very eclectic Jackson Square area, we walked down Frenchman Street, where we stopped into a bar with great live swing music and dancers, and ended at the the Spotted Cat Music Club for more live music, but more jazz and bluesy.

Murph happily catching up with his buds

We then  moved back to Magazine street to post up at the Bulldog bar to watch game 7 of the World Series. Aside from it being an amazing game, we were able to watch it from their jam packed patio with Murphy with us. And the Cubs winning made it that much sweeter.

The next day was probably one of the cooler experiences of our trip so far: a swamp tour through the Louisiana bayou on an airboat. We were on a smaller boat, with just one other couple, and it was BYOB so we brought our cooler along, and the tour guide was from the area himself, making his authentic Bayou accent impossible to understand. Somehow Derek understood every word he said and became the trip translator. The airboat itself was so much fun; they have you wear headphones when it really gets going because of how loud it is, and the boat seemingly flies/hovers across the water as it whips you through the canals and swamp. Steve, our guide, started the trip off by saying that usually, at this time of year, it’s much cooler and most of the alligators are hibernating, so he would do his best to find us some but couldn’t make any promises. We hadn’t been in the swamp for more than a minute and there are gators left and right of us, the banks, in the water swimming right by us, everywhere. It was awesome. He even brought out marshmallows to feed the gators (they use these because they float), and had one of the gators jump onto the boat. And we got to hold a baby gator. Super fun and interesting, and a highlight of our visit to New Orleans. After the tour, well of course we headed to an authentic Bayou restaurant to over indulge in fried food.

Finally, on our last day in New Orleans, we took the street car downtown to make an obligatory visit to Bourbon Street. In between many bars, live music, karaoke (I should note here that Derek serenaded a bar full of women by singing Fat Bottomed Girls and Sarah rapped Shoop like a pro) dancing, a dueling piano bar, more fried food and beignets, we also somehow managed to go on a ghost tour later in the evening that wove on and off of Bourbon.

The ghost tour was interesting, as we were led through the streets of the French Quarter learning about New Orleans voodoo history and haunted buildings. There’s one old mansion at the end of Bourbon Street (I think it was the Laura Plantation?) with a particularly haunted past, and we heard the stories of tortured and murdered slaves by the original homeowners. Apparently nobody has owned the property since for more than 6 years (Nicholas Cage actually owned it at one point but had to sell it) and everyone who has owned it has had bad things happen to them, deaths of close family or bankrupcy, while owning it. So that was our one, and hopefully last, Bourbon Street experience, and a fun and fitting way to cap off our time in New Orleans.