New Orleans

Exactly one year ago today, my boyfriend and I left for our first multi-day road trip together to New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans is one of those cities that you can just feel the culture in the air. Everything in that city has such a unique personality, from the people, to the food, to the voodoo and the music! You don’t simply visit New Orleans, you experience it.

 

On our first full day there we decided to walk the entire French Quarter!  It was so beautiful.  All of the buildings were adorable shades of pink, yellow, blue and orange with those simple, but perfect cast iron balconies.  You really felt like you could’ve been standing there in the early 1900’s.  When you get closer towards the center of the quarter, by Jackson Square, you can hear that Jazz music starting to play.  The notes from the trumpets and tubas pull you in towards the infamous Cafe du Monde, where we of course stuffed our faces with the richest beignets!

  Then we wandered to the French Market where we found some amazing fresh foods, as well as cute trinkets to bring back home.  (My impulse buy was a voodoo doll).  Jackson square is such a beautiful place to mingle, and we saw some sweet couples and talented artists who lined the walls of the square.  The Saint Louis Cathedral is so beautiful, on the outside it reminds me more of a Disney castle than a church.  The inside was truly a piece of art between the sculptures, ceiling paintings and stained glass windows.  You could spend hours looking at all of the details!

 

We found ourselves next on Bourbon Street, which now has such a tourist feel to it, I don’t think you get all the splendor that was Bourbon of the past.  We did go into The Old Absinthe House to sit where many great men sat and drank.  It was such an awesome thing to experience something that Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde had also experienced.  That afternoon we made the best pizza decision of our lives,  French Quarter Pizzeria.  They had the most amazing pizza!  We ended up eating there three times before we left the city

 

 We down to the River Walk then, and went into shops, and attempted to take a ferry, but it turned we missed it, and then grew tired of waiting, so we decided to walk around some more.  That night we explored the Quarter at night, when everything was lit up, and it was even cooler!  We even got some “Real Absinthe Shots”!

The next day we drove to Vacherie. This is the perfect place to take a plantation tour. We decided to take the tour at Oak Alley Plantation, which is easily one of the prettiest homes I’ve ever seen. It’s been featured in many films and videos including Interview with the Vampire.  The plantation tour extremely overpriced, in my opinion, at $32 per person. Even though the inside is interesting to see, the outside would be a good enough view.  However, their restaurant is really tasty and we had our fist poboy there.

 We drove back to New Orleans and explored their garden district a little bit, and then went to Degas’ house.  That area has some gorgeous homes.  Then we of course went back to the quarter, ate our favorite foods and walked around.

Our last full day we went to a New Orleans Saints game!  Talk about some action!  That Super Dome was completely packs with thousands of SCREAMING fans!  There are no football fans like Saints fans!  Even when we walked back to the Quarter to our hotel we were surrounded by Saints fans cheering!  It showed even more the unity that the team really did bring to the city.

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