At the end June, as soon as swim team was over, we packed the minivan (food, Play-Doh, craft supplies, and many, many movies) and headed out on a 16-day epic road trip to Virginia and back. I had been looking forward to and planning this trip for months--it was our reward for making it through the first year of teaching Seminary, and I had so much fun choosing routes, researching hotels, deciding which zoos to visit, etc. It was a great trip. I had been yearning to take a family road trip for years, to see parts of our country that we had never seen, but our kids weren't ready yet. And while Natalie is still on the small side (After listening to her whine nonstop as we walked around New Orleans, I bought a cheap umbrella stroller at K-Mart for her to ride in. Best $17 we spent the whole trip.) both girls did really well. I absolutely loved having two weeks of adventures together.
So, on a Friday morning we drove almost 10 hours from San Antonio to...
New Orleans! Oh, my. I love New Orleans. I had wanted to go there for
many, many years, but was intimidated by the city's rather risque
reputation. I wasn't sure it would be a good place to take our kids,
but after reading
a great online article about things to do with kids in The Big Easy,
I decided we should go. I am SO glad we did! I loved that it looked
exactly like I had imagined it, and like no other place I had ever
been. The French Quarter was fantastic, but wait--I'm getting ahead of
myself. First we took a walk around the Garden District, where the houses look like this:
Amazing! Mansion after mansion, with the lush hanging plants and the wrought iron balconies. I loved it. Natalie and Ella liked the hitching posts:
Our hotel (chosen because the room had a loft with two twin beds reached by a spiral staircase) was two blocks from the streetcar, and we rode the
St. Charles Avenue streetcar from end to end, marveling at the elaborate mansions all along the way. The drivers were shockingly surly, but we loved riding the clanky old streetcars:
Okay, NOW we can talk about the French Quarter. The beignets at
Cafe du Monde were soooo good. The cafe was jammed with people, so we waited in the take-out line for our tasty treats. All they serve is coffee and beignets, which are basically square donuts dredged in powdered sugar, hot and crunchy and chewy and sweet. Eating beignets at Cafe du Monde was the quintessential New Orleans experience, and we loved it:
Right next to Cafe du Monde were stairs that led to the top of the levee. This was the view from the top:
I could have stared at that view of the St. Louis Cathedral all day, because it is so famous and I was right there! Behind us was the Mississippi River, wide and green. Jackson Square is the open area in front of the church, and it is full of vendors selling their "art", street performers, and fortune tellers--it was really amusing to walk by and hear someone having their fortune read. I'm talking crystal balls, the whole nine yards. Natalie decided at one point to take a rest on the Square:
And here we are in the French Quarter. We avoided Bourbon Street, which really is rather unsavory, full of XXX and bars, but there is SO much more to the French Quarter than Bourbon Street. It is definitely old and crumbly in places, and you have to watch your step because the sidewalks are wonky, but it is jam-packed with charm. Keep in mind that we were there mostly during the day, but I never felt unsafe, and everything was pretty clean. Old, but clean. And oh my goodness, so hot, but I loved it:
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