New Orleans Part 1

We are back from our week long vacation in New Orleans. We all had a great time. The weekend started off with me, the children and my mother in law sitting in New Orleans traffic for an hour. Not a fun way to start vacation but the kids were pretty good and didn't whine too much. Vinson met us at the apartment later that night after he got off work. He had a quicker trip since he didn't have to sit in traffic.

Arriving the evening before gave us a fresh start on Saturday. We woke up and got ready to head to the Audubon Zoo. It was hot but we still had fun seeing the various animals. After a long day of walking in the zoo we went back to the apartment and rested. Later in the evening Vins and his mother went to Pat O'Briens for a hurricane and some piano music then they went to Preservation Hall for some New Orleans Jazz. The kids and I spent the evening reading and resting.

On Sunday we went to Cafe Dumonde for a breakfast of beignets and chocolate milk. You can't spend a week in New Orleans and not eat a beignet. When we arrived the place was packed. We finally located a table inside. We would have preferred to eat outside but sometimes you take what you can get. This was Tanek and Kaia's first time to have beignets. They loved them and got pretty messy from all of the powdered sugar.

After our heavily sugared breakfast we went to the Odyssey's Shipwreck Treasure Museum. It was advertised mostly towards children. While it was enjoyable we found it to be more for older children. We started off watching a film about the company and some of the treasures they have found. After the film you go through the museum where they have some fun interactive things to do. There were several games that took a lot of reading in order to play so they were a little out of my kids age range. I think the most enjoyable thing about the museum was the hurricane chamber. You step into a small glassed chamber and experience hurricane winds reaching up to 78mph.

For lunch we went back to the apartment and made some sandwiches. We rested for a little while and then walked down the street to find a place to watch the Southern Decadence Parade. I'll post some pictures for that in a separate post. When the parade was finished we had supper and then walked to St. Peter's square to listen to the street musician. We heard a really good singer playing guitar and sat down to listen for half an hour.

To end the evening we walked down Bourbon Street taking in the lights and sounds of the French Quarter.