Blogs from Louisiana, United States, North America - page 8

I woke up and was out of bed at 8:30 but we still got a late start. The morning plan of Café Du Monde and St. louis Cathedral in Jackson Square were put on hold. While Jerry was getting ready, I finished the blog from the day before. When we finally left the room, our first stop was the Gumbo Shop for lunch. This is a pretty popular place with both locals and tourists. There was a bit of line (actually the line was nonstop and still going strong when we were done with our lunch) but it moved quickly. Fortunately, we got a table inside because it was another hot and sticky day. We had a pretty traditional Creole/Cajun meal. Probably more Creole than Cajun. We both had Ice Tea to cool off, and the ... read more

We have gone a lot of places this year, mostly on the eastern seaboard, but this is the first real vacation of the year and the only trip to get its own blog post. Since a trip abroad was not in the budget this year, we choose New Orleans, the closest thing we can get to France in the United States. This is also our 10thanniversary trip. Ten years since our wedding, 15 years together. This trip also marks the first long vacation that Tarragon will be joining us. As usual, travel day is not much to blog about. Typical cab to Penn Station, NJ transit to Newark airport and flight to New Orleans. Well it was not totally typical, as this was the first flight for Tarragon. It pretty much went very smoothly, took a ... read more

We left New Orleans on Wednesday on a two day schlep up to Memphis. Around NO (and of course all through The South) there are old plantations and plantation mansions galore, many of which are open to the public. From what we could see most of these focus on the 'grand mansion', plantation owners, southern gals etc. We wanted our focus to be more on those whose work made all those people wealthy - the plantation slaves. We had seen little reference in NO to slavery, and searching for 'slavery tours' on Google bought up surprisingly little, with the exception of the Whitney Plantation. Here the focus was very much on looking at plantations and plantation life from the view of the slaves. The founder, Ambroise Heidel emigrated from Germany, but changed his name to Heydal ... read more

Last day of the festival and the day we check-out. Of course it is the first morning that I sleep until 8am. Breakfast, showers, packing it is a whirlwind. We remembered to say goodbye to Liz, the breakfast lady, and I thanked Jeannette at the front desk for all of her help. I get the ladies suitcases and my own things on out to the van and at 10am drive over to the other hotel to pick up Tyler. Luckily Milliken has decided to source his own transportation to the airport so that saves an hour or so of my day. Milliken has already headed out to the casino to try and recoup his losses or to the fest. Not sure and we don't see him for the rest of the day. Tossing Tyler's bag in ... read more

And history repeats itself. Abcde and I are up early and head downstairs for coffee. I like Hampton Inn's Robust Blend and Abs drinks the decaf at room temp, both of us like it black and bitter. As we sit and watch the news we find President Trump had bombed Syrian airfields in response to Syrians poisoning other Syrians with chemical weapons. At least Trump did what Hillary said he should do? So both Democrats AND Republicans can be happy about bombing a third world country into the 4 dimension? But I digress, this travelogue is about the French Quarter Festival, the greatest free festival ever! Or at least that I have ever been to...Eventually we rouse Wife, cycle through the shower and once presentable, head out to enjoy the city and the beautiful day that ... read more