New Orleans is on the Mississippi River and has some great water views. We frequently sit on the benches near the French Quarter and watch the river and the ships that go by.
Along the river you can also find several plantations (conveniently called the River Plantations), that are open for tours. We did not take any tours this time, just drove by each one. Unless you book with a tour group, each plantation tour is a separate cost. It would have been roughly $70 for the four of us at each location, which was a little more than we wanted to spend. The last time we were here, we did take a tour of Oak Alley Plantation. It is a gorgeous home and the live oak trees lining the walkway are amazing.
Images from our Oak Alley Plantation tour in 2017This one was right next to a Marathon plant!
We drove by Destrehan, San Francisco, St. Joseph, and Oak Alley plantations. Some of these have been kept up a little better than the others. They are all gorgeous homes though with different stories to tell. If you are in New Orleans, I would tour at least one of them. They are very interesting pieces of history.
The first time we came to New Orleans in 2017, the boys were exhausted by the time we stopped to eat at the Acme Oyster House. They were much smaller then. They fell asleep before we even placed our orders, woke up enough to eat a few bites, and then fell back asleep on the table.
Luckily, with age (well, I guess to a certain point), comes the ability to stay awake longer. This visit, we got four different dishes to share. We just recently started doing this, and it seems to be working well for us. We pick 4 meals and then ask for an extra plate (or two) so we can share the meal. That way everyone gets to try a little of everything. The side benefit is that it forces us to try something new a lot of the times, something that individually we may not have ordered. (Normally I wouldn’t order anything with fish, Will wouldn’t order anything with cheese, etc.)
This time we ordered the Acme Special Po-Boy, Fried Fish Po-Boy, New Orleans Medley (samplings of jambalaya, seafood gumbo, red beans & rice, and a grilled sausage), a side order of hush puppies and onion rings. Their specialty is chargrilled oysters, which we did not order this visit (but we did the last time we were there).
The restaurant has a lot of red tinted lights, which makes pictures difficult. Although it may not look pretty, everything tasted great.
Everything was delicious. The Acme Special Po-Boy was made with roast beef and was very moist! It was a little messy to eat. Nick and Ben loved the fish po-boy, and Will hasn’t met a rice and beans that he hasn’t liked yet.
The tables were much more spread out this visit due to Covid restrictions. (Last time it was wall to wall people and tables.) They also had a contract tracing list to sign when you entered. We haven’t really seen too much of that down here.
We mostly enjoyed walking Bourbon Street during the day. Even with the COVID restrictions, it still was busier at night. One of Ben and my “bucket list” items was to attend Mardi Gras. We lost this opportunity, but wanted to make the best of it and still experience Bourbon at night. We also didn’t want to be in the midst of everyone down in the street.
Images on Bourbon during the day. Not quite the Scooby I remember 😂
We were lucky enough to book a hotel room on Bourbon Street at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel. Unfortunately, the hotel had most of the 2nd floor under renovations, so we were on the third floor. We did have our own balcony (some of the rooms share a balcony). The rooms currently did not have a mini fridge or microwave with Covid being cited as the reason. Our room had two double beds (doubles or Kings only).
It was nice to have an unlimited hot water shower. The bathroom consisted of a sink, the toilet, and the shower/tub.
The room was pretty standard, I feel like you were paying mostly for the location. There was a closet with a luggage rack, a chair at the desk, two double beds (a little softer than I like and feather pillows), and an ottoman tucked under the shared nightstand. There was a TV as well, which the boys enjoyed. The balcony had two chairs with double doors that opened into the room. There were no screens on the doors, so in the summer I imagine the bugs could be a problem. The pool was open, but it wasn’t heated, so it was a little chilly for us. There was also a Grab & Go Breakfast option, as the sit-down dining was closed. Breakfast was not included in your stay.
Bourbon Street picked up a little on the weekends, and last weekend (1/16/21) was busier than we had seen it this month. (Still not as busy as it was in 2017.) Bars closed at 11:00 pm, so about 10:00 the lines started getting longer to get in. The one right across from us was doing temperature checks to get in. We walked around and got back to our room about 4:00 pm. Our our way back to the hotel, we only saw about 60% of the people out wearing masks. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of mask wearing as the night progressed.
Pool and elevator
We saw some crazy stuff: horses on Bourbon Street, a guy dancing on a trailer bed. There was a drum band next to the hotel, and later a religious group complete with a cross came to stand by the hotel as well. After the kids went to bed, we did see it get a little rowdier.
Pano view from balcony, street performer, horse group, cross bearing religious group, crowd watching drummers
We wanted to get out and take a walk, so we started looking for local parks. We found Audubon Park. There was on-street parking, and their website states there is a parking lot as well. You can also take the St. Charles Streetcar to get to the Park. The park had a a golf course, a great walking/biking trail. There were a few shelters and spots to have a picnic. There was a pond as well, but no fishing was allowed. It sits next to the Audubon Zoo and also across from Tulane University. The park itself was free, but the Zoo and golfing do cost extra.
Restrooms were also hard to come by if you are not familiar with the park. Shelters 10, 11, 12 are listed as having restrooms. (Two of which are on the same side of the park.) The men’s restroom was closed at Shelter 10 and while the women’s was open, it was missing toilet paper in some stalls and was ok in terms of cleanliness.
We really enjoyed walking around the park and seeing the huge live oak trees. We stopped at the Tree of Life (Note: It’s on the zoo side, not the golf course side, so we had to cross the road to get to that part of the park). It was planted around 1740! The tree was amazingly large and very neat to see.
We also saw The Labyrinth while we were on that side of the park. It is a two part maze, but is built into the ground, so there is no getting lost! We had a kind of sunny day, so it was a little hard to see the different colors of the bricks marking the path.
We first had them in New Orleans in 2017. I’ve tried them elsewhere but they just aren’t the same. We were lucky enough to be staying in the French Quarter in 2017 and were able to walk up almost everyday to grab a bag to share for breakfast. It was delicious and messy (powdered sugar just gets everywhere!).
A staple in New Orleans is Cafe Du Monde, which serves beignets and chicory coffee. They have a few locations, but my favorite is the one on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. If you are staying in the French Quarter, it is easy to walk to and you can then grab your goodies, walk up the stairs to the right of the Cafe, and eat while enjoying the view of the Mississippi River.
The cafe has two to three lines open during the day and one line open at night. The outdoor seating was open during this visit, but there are a lot less tables (spaced out for social distancing/Covid). However, they were serving in bags, not on plates like before. The bags still had a ton of powdered sugar in the bottom though if you wanted more for dipping. I would say there was about 1/2 inch in the bag after the beignets were gone!
Beignets on a plate from our 2017 visit. Rest of the pictures from 2021.
It was $3.40 (plus tax) for a bag of 3 beignets. As of our visit, January 2021, the Cafe was only accepting cash.
While walking through the French Quarter, we stopped at the Dutch Alley Artist’s Co-Op. They had some awesome pieces in there ranging from photographs to jewelry.
I wish we had more room (or didn’t have to worry about things breaking during moves), because there were so many neat pieces in the store. Each artist had their own section/display.
Note: They did have their masks on the whole time until the picture. We stood 6 ft away and were the only ones in the store.
We had a great chat with two of the artists that were in that day, Paul and James. Paul had some great wood creations, including bow ties! James had some unique jewelry made out of records. They were really unique and bright.
Ben bought me a really cool jellyfish necklace. I need to get a longer chain for it, but it is certainly a unique piece that is unlike anything I have.
I don’t think they ship, as I didn’t see anything on their website, but if you are in the French Quarter, you should definitely check it out!
We first came to New Orleans for our family summer vacation in 2017. The boys were so much smaller then. The place was bustling with activity: musicians, street performers, restaurants and bars everywhere, stores with pretty much everything you could think of (food, clothes, souvenirs, etc.). It was bright and lively, with people watching as far as the eye could see.
There is an eclectic group of people in New Orleans, and I do believe there is something for everyone. If you want to party, go to Bourbon at night. Otherwise, there is plenty to see and do during the day and avoid the French Quarter (Bourbon specifically) at night. There are museums, parks, swamp and plantation tours, ghost tours, music everywhere…so many activities to keep you entertained. The food is amazing. (If you have had the bourbon shake I make at Christmas, this is where I had first had it.)
When we planned this journey, we wanted to see new places and things we had not seen before. There were a few that Ben or I might have seen, but the rest of us hadn’t. New Orleans was the exception to that. Everyone loved it and we couldn’t wait to visit again. We booked an RV park back in January 2020, before everything went crazy. We planned to stay a month so that we could be there for part of Carnival season. Although we would miss Mardi Gras, we would still hit some of the parades.
Covid of course changed all of that. Mardi Gras was cancelled and New Orleans isn’t quite the same as it was the last time we visited.
The mayor has put in place some strict Covid restrictions: Mardi Gras was cancelled, masks required indoors and outdoors (not while eating or exercising), social distancing, no live entertainment indoors, bars close at 11:00 pm, no indoor seating at bars and breweries, 25% capacity at a lot of places. I personally feel better with having a mask requirement for indoors and outdoors.
It was empty. Walking around during the week, we saw only a handful of other people. Saturday, normally a very busy night on Bourbon, had maybe a tenth of the people we saw last time. Jackson Square was once teaming with performers and artists, now only had a few. We saw a lot more closed shops than our previous visit. It was a muted New Orleans. For a town that relies on tourism, Covid seems to have hit really hard.
Ben and I were walking around the French Quarter. We bought a few postcards from one of the shops. She told us we were her first sale of the day at 1:00 pm.
We have a monthly budget and part of it goes towards giving. We decided for January’s giving to help locally in New Orleans. After seeing and hearing from local store owners how quiet it has been and how they are struggling, we wanted to use our giving budget to increase our tips and donations to local places in New Orleans.
Granted, one was June vs January, but we’ll see how busy it gets closer to Mardi Gras.
I was doing some reading and found that “the unemployment rate in New Orleans increased (from 12.4% in September to 15.2% in October) with approximately 29K people unemployed. For comparison, last year during the same time period, the total labor force was roughly 180K with 9k unemployed with an overall unemployment rate of 5.1%.” per nolaba.org.
