A few days in New Orleans

Recently, my friend Rachel and I traveled to the great city of New Orleans, and I wanted to share with you our itinerary (and what we did when we deviated from our itinerary). I would gladly go back to explore the city more, but we packed as much as we could into the few days that we were there! We were originally suppose to arrive early on Wednesday, April 10th, but weather prevented us from arriving until around 5:00p sadly. After arriving, we had two full days in NOLA and then 1/2 day on Saturday. Since our plans ended up deviating somewhat, I’ll share what we planned to do and then what we actually did each day. At the end of the post, I’ll share some food and activity options that were recommended to us or that we researched. This post is adapted from the travel itinerary that I wrote for us and modified to include our actual experiences and reflections.

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 – Travel Day!

Planned day: Travel to NOLA, take the bus from the airport to the garden district/FQ. Store luggage either at hotel or storage locker. Get a snack. Hang out. Take the Gumbo food tour 1-4pm (3rd Block Depot, 316 Chartres Street – meeting place). Check into hotel. Rest/hang out. Get dinner.

Actual day: Our flight was delayed, then our flight made it to New Orleans but couldn’t land due to flooding, we got rerouted to Houston, waited about 2-3 hours there, then got on another plane to New Orleans, and finally landed around 5:00pm. We were suppose to land around 9:45am. The real kicker for us was that we live nine hours away from NOLA and could have drive there in a short amount of time than our attempt to fly took… The food tour was canceled due to the flooding and was booked out for the week so we weren’t able to reschedule – a bummer since we were really looking forward to that. We took the bus from the airport using a 3 day transit pass (only $8 for unlimited rides at the time we visited) – purchased and used through the Le Pass App.

We checked into our hotel, Maison Saint Charles by Hotel RL, which we really liked. The rooms weren’t anything very special, but the outdoor courtyards were pretty, the stray cats delighted us, and there was a streetcar stop right outside the hotel that got us to the French Quarter fairly quickly. I would stay there again if I were visiting the same part of New Orleans. It did get louder on Friday night, but it was pretty peaceful Wednesday and Thursday. We were so tired by the time we got to the hotel that we decided to get an easy dinner from the nearby Pop-Eye’s. That was a mistake. It took between 45-60 minutes to get our food, it was horrible disorganized, and poorly managed.

Thursday, April 11^th, 2024

Planned day: Parade 9:30 – 11am for French Quarter Fest (Iberville st/200 block bourbon st to Jackson square). Hang out in French Quarter after parade until hungry for lunch. Have lunch. Take streetcar to City Park (southside) for New Orleans Museum of Art and park activities. When done with park and museum, either get dinner or go to St Louis Cemetery #3 and take self-guided tour (near park). Take street car back to hotel area.

Actual day: After our horrible travel day, we ended up having a late start on Thursday and missed the start of the French Quarter Fest parade by the time we made our way over to Bourbon street. We took the street car to Canal Street and walked around in that area until we hit Bourbon street and stumbled on to the end of the parade. We watched that for a while and then made our way back to Canal street to catch a street car to the City Park. However, due to line maintenance, we had to walk up Canal street several blocks to catch the streetcar. We enjoyed the walk though!

When we got to the streetcar stop, we accidentally took the wrong line and went in the direction of the cemetery route. Since that would still take us close to the park and we planned to love at the cemeteries anyway, we decided to stick with it. The cemetery route terminates by a restaurant called Bud’s Broiler which is where we had lunch – delicious burgers and fries! Nearby is St. Patrick Cemetery #2, a catholic cemetery, which we then walked around. Other cemeteries nearby were closed to the public, so we looked over the fences are those where we could.

We then moved on to walk to the City Park, passing the (closed) Masonic cemetery on the way and several impressive trees. When we reached the park, we found more impressive trees and a beautiful pond. We entered from the southwest side of the park, and it truly was beautiful to just walk around there. We had a goal in mind through – Cafe du Monde! At Cafe de Monde, we each got an order of beignets and a coffee (we needed the caffeine fix for sure!). There’s even a window where you can watch the beignets be cut and thrown (literally) into the fryer while you wait to place your order. We had our beignets in minutes and made our way outside to partake. I have to say – I was impressed with how clean they kept the patio considering how much powdered sugar gets all over the place!

The NOMA (New Orleans Museum of Art) was a delightful museum. We started our visit off in the sculpture garden which was a beautiful area with sloping paths and interesting art. The garden can be entered for free, but donations are encouraged. We weren’t able to cover the entire garden before deciding that we needed to move on to the museum before we got too tired to do so. The entrance is grand and massive – fitting with the scale of the museum.

Art museums aren’t always my favorite designation, but I did enjoy looking through the NOMA. I thought the art was well curated. Sometimes, art museums can be overwhelming through putting too much art in each gallery, but I think they spaced the art out well and gave you plenty of space to consider each piece of art. This let me consider more thoughtfully pieces of art that I might have moved passed quickly in a more crowded gallery. The temporary exhibit of Wangechi Mutu’s art was also haunting and interesting in a way that I’m still considering now.

After we finished at the museum, we headed over to what I think was my favorite part of our City Park experience – The Singing Oak. Located just to the west of the museum in the park, there’s an oak tree that was been decorated with lots of chimes in various sizes that have been tuned to create a beautiful melody. You can hear it from nearby the tree, but I recommend standing near the trunk to get the best experience. When we arrived at the tree, there was someone nearby meditating and practicing yoga, so I decided to take cue from her and practice a little yoga as well (especially since I was very sore from all the walking). The lake nearby, the chimes in the tree, and the soft green grass created one of my favorite spots that I’ve done yoga in yet.

It was beginning to get close to dark, so we traveled back to our hotel via the streetcars once again. We opted to dine at the restaurant attached to the hotel – Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar & Fish House. The food was good. We started with the Crawfish, spinach and artichoke dip. I then had the “Taste of New Orleans” – a platter with jambalaya, crawfish etouffee, and red beans & rice with smoked sausage. I think my favorite was the jambalaya. (I’m *not* a foodie – can you tell?)

Friday, April 12^th, 2024

Planned day: Take early swamp tour (leaves from French Quarter at 8:30a) which last 3.75hrs. Return, do lunch, hang out at French Quarter Fest or stalk the streets. Get dinner when hungry

Actual day: We started the morning bright and early to go to our swamp tour which met at the Toulouse lighthouse. The instructions said to be there thirty minutes early, so we booked it through the French Quarter – only to then sit around and wait until the bus pulled up exactly at the listed departure time. Oh well. We booked this tour through Grayline so we would have transportation out of New Orleans – the bus was comfortable and clean. We made good time out of the city even though there were road blocks due to the French Quarter Fest going on.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from a swamp tour, but I didn’t expect to see close to ten alligators while out on the boat! My experience with this sort of tours is that you often only see one or two of the animals you’re looking for – and that’s if you squint your eyes real hard. However, I had read that taking and early morning tour increases your odds of seeing alligators, so that’s why I booked us on an early tour – and it worked out! The swamp is interesting to see if you’ve never seen a swamp before like me, but the alligators ended up being the real highlight.

I also, strangely enough, didn’t quite realize that Spanish moss is a real thing and wasn’t just made up for Halloween decorations? I can see why someone looked at Spanish moss and decided it would be good for spooky decor, but the real stuff looks so much better than the fake stuff ever has in my experience.

Our drop off point from the swamp tour was right next to one of the stages for the French Quarter Fest, so we headed over there to listen to some music and get lunch from the vendors set up there. I loved how much people were having a blast on the FQF – people were two stepping and swing dancing just in their viewing spots. Good food and good music, but we didn’t hang out long since we didn’t have any chairs and the sun was beating down pretty harshly (plus, we had a few other stops we wanted to squeeze in).

We made our way over to the Uptown/Magazine street area. Rachel’s co-worker had recommended several things over there to her, so we wanted to check it out. First up was Octavia Books where we got books for the trip home – a very well stocked bookstore. We then wandered Magazine street stopping in PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans, a record store called Sisters in Christ, and just enjoying the neighborhood. This was an excellent neighborhood to walk around and admire the houses. I loved the New Orleans’s houses – the detail and craftsmanship on them! I didn’t take many pictures because that seems weird to do to someone’s house, but I couldn’t resist capturing the tree and fence absolutely decked in Mardi Gras beads!

We had dinner in the same neighborhood at Domilise’s Po-Boys – excellent food and my first po-boy. For dessert, we went to the Creole Creamery. They had so many fascinating flavors! I had the white peach and elderflower sorbet, and it was delicious! I think I could go there a dozen more times and not get tired of it!

Saturday, April 13^th, 2024 – Travel Day!

Planned day: Breakfast out in the city, pack up for 11:00 AM check out, wander in direction of Amtrak, have lunch, get snacks, shop, board train at 1:45p.

Actual day: Our actual day was very similar to the planned day for once! We had breakfast at the Avenue Cafe (fairly close to our hotel, but we took the streetcar there) – that was delicious. I had a cruffin (croissant/muffin) and Rachel had a yogurt parfait bowl (filled with so much very good fruit! She couldn’t finish it, so I got to have some). Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel to check out and then to mammoth coffee to wait for it to be time to head to the train station. An honorable mention also goes to the fanciest grocery store I’ve ever been in – beating out the Whole Foods we went into the day before – Rouses Market. We needed to get lunch before the train and there weren’t a ton of options we wanted to travel to with our luggage so we figured we’d grab something from the grocery store. Well, this grocery store had a salad bar, a hot food bar, and an olive bar? I wasn’t convinced olive bars were a real thing these days before this – who likes olives enough to use an olive bar? The actual grocery aisles were also very nice, well lit, and organized.

Finally, though, it was time for our time in New Orleans to come to an end. We had tried to plan this trip after graduating high school and it didn’t pan out, then we planned and booked this trip in April 2020 as a sort of bachelorette/last hoorah before I got married (and you can guess what happened), jobs and life changes kept us from rebooking it – but finally we made it in 2024! I’ll admit, I was starting to think the trip was cursed on Wednesday in the midst of all the travel interruptions. I’m glad it wasn’t and I’m glad we finally got to have this experience together!

If you would like to read about our experiences on the train home, you can do so on my post “A Journey on Two Trains”. If you would like to explore some of the other food or activity options that I researched or where recommended to us but that we didn’t go to, you can do so below. Thanks for reading!

Food recommendations/options:

Other potential activities:

• Historic New Orleans Collection’s museum (free): Open 9:30am – 4:30PM, but timed tickets required.
• Home – BK House (museum/fancy house)| Tours 10a – 3 p | $10
• Walter Grinnan Robinson House | Fancy house to walk by in Garden District | 1415 Third St
• The Great American Alligator Museum | Garden District | Thurs 11:30 – 3:30| $ unknown
• French Quarter Visitor Center | 9:30a – 4:30p
• ST Louis Cathedral | 9a – 4p (Mass 12:05p) | $1
• The moonwalk riverfront park | 6a-10p
• Louis Armstrong Park | 7-7
• Jackson Square | 8a – 6p
• Southern Food and Beverage Museum & Museum of the American Cocktail | $12 | 11a – 5p
• ** Magazine Street start around Peaches records and walk east
• ** Uptown, Audubon Park
• ** Oak and Carrolton St area
• ** Octavia Books

** signifies recommendations made to us

KalinaH

A few days in New Orleans

Discover more from KalinaH

Leave a comment Cancel reply

A few days in New Orleans

Share this:

Discover more from KalinaH

Leave a comment Cancel reply