Impressions of New Orleans

It was definitely a whirlwind tour, having allocated a single day to explore New Orleans. As a stated earlier, we stayed at French Quarter RV Resort, just steps from the French Quarter. Yes, it is VERY pricie, but it's all about location, baby! It worked out very well for us all in all, except for the actual site itself. The resort is located just off of and below I 10. Believe it or not, smack dab in the middle of the resort is a huge billboard piling! Yes, our site was right next to this, and caused two things to happen: of course, our satellite dish went straight into the billboard, so no television for us ( but we did find out that the antenna works just fine for local channels). The other thing, everyone knows that birds hang out around billboards, and everyone knows what birds drop (so to speak).....yes our vehicles were bombed! So, if you do decide to splurge and stay here, DO NOT take site 47 :-).

After seeing how insanely crowded the French Quarter was in the late afternoon, we decided our best course of action would be to wander down that way fairly early in the morning. That would beat the heat of midday as well. Armed with a self walking tour guide that I printed out, off we went right after breakfast.

So many of the buildings have back history to them, I won't list them all here. As you wander down the streets, you have to look for the bronze plaques posted on the sides of buildings, detailing the history of the different buildings. 

It was interesting to note the eccentricities as we passed down the narrow streets; this was a light fixture over the entrance to a parking garage, of all things!

This pretty kitty was in the building of an art gallery. I couldn't get her to look at me though as she was more interested in keeping her eye on the dogs.

Beautiful tiled street signs told us what the original name of the streets are.

I believe he is looking for tips; at least he doesn't come after you :-).

We laughed at these two real estate signs on different buildings; would you want haunted or not haunted??

We then strolled over to Jackson Square, for a photo of the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral and sculpture of  Andrew Jackson. St. Louis Cathedral is one of New Orleans' most prominent landmarks, and is among the oldest cathedrals in the United States, being built in 1718.

Of course, a walk along "The Moonwalk" along the Mississippi River is necessary.

On to the French Market at the north end of the French Quarter. We passed the Southern Candymakers and saw them making pralines. I didn't go in and get any, as Al does not care for candy with nuts in it, but once I read what pralines are, I wish I had!

We then walked down The Esplanade, the far end of the French Quarter where many residences are located. The wooded median runs down in between the two lanes of traffic, making a nice place to walk while viewing some of the beautiful homes. Some examples are shown below:

By now we had walked quite a long ways, it was getting very warm and a bit more crowded, and it was lunch time! Having had several recommendations, we headed to the Central Grocery for their world famous sandwich, the muffaletta. Being a cold sandwich, we had it to go, and walked back to the RV Park for lunch. A few more pictures, though...

Both the dogs and our feet welcomed the respite, as well as the nice cool interior of the coach....the air conditioning works just fine :-)! So we took out the sandwich....

It's pretty large.....

Wow, was it tasty!! 

After lunch (yep, we ate the whole thing LOL!), we acted like typical Southerners and took a mid-day siesta; no need to wear ourselves out in the heat of the afternoon! We then decided to pile in the car and take a ride down St. Charles Avenue in the Garden District, to view the beautiful homes down there. There were definitely some gorgeous estates, as well as a few homes that I can totally envision the vampire LeStat living in....weren't those novels set in the Garden District of New Orleans?

We parked and took a walk through Audubon Park.

The trees were beautiful.

Different artwork was scattered throughout the walking paths. Several fountains, playgrounds, picnic grounds, and a golf course are also found in the park.

You could see the iconic tower of Loyola University from the park.

We were pretty thoroughly walked out by this time; I will say, if you visit New Orleans, put on your best walking shoes as it is the best way to see things! We headed back to the RV Park, fed the dogs, and then went out in search of dinner ourselves. After checking different reviews on TripAdvisor, we settled on The Original Pierre Masperro's. It wasn't too far from the RV Park, had excellent reviews, and this is what we had for dinner:

Shrimp and grits, chicken and waffles, with a bread pudding with a whiskey sauce for dessert. 

This dinner, folks, was enough to bring us back this way someday!!

So, this was our whirlwind tour of New Orleans. We did enjoy it, and there are enough things we left undone that it would merit a return trip someday. I hope you enjoyed the pictures, and we are now settled in San Antonio Texas until next Friday. On to more adventures :-).