Nola - Day Four - Last Day

Sunday served as our last full day in New Orleans. We were all feeling the effects of our stay away from home. Leah and myself did not want to leave anytime soon. Pretty sure Matt was content with heading back home. Louis is just happy being outside so I don't think he cared either way.

We spent the day walking down to the Riverwalk. We spent some time walking around and had some Sno-Balls, a New Orleans treat. Sno-Balls may look a bit like Sno-Cones but the ice is different. It is shaved much like fallen snow. I especially like my with condensed milk. We got ours with various syrups. They were refreshing and very good.






Matt and Leah walked down past the barrier to the sands onto the Mississippi River.








We then walked down to the French Market and picked up some more souvenirs for family.

The night before at one of the parades we were entertained by this great marching band, the 'Get A Life Marching Band' from Portland, Oregon. They were absolutely wonderful. We saw them again during our travels in and around the Jackson Square/French Market. They are great musicians, hilarious and so much fun to watch.

This is the synopsis of the band's first trip to New Orleans.

Portland's best traveled all-adult marching band recently augmented its string of national performances with its first New Orleans Mardi Gras parade. Over 100 members of the band hit the streets to laissez les bon temps rouler in the Knights of Sparta parade on the evening of February 26. The four-mile parade, dubbed "the best parade of the first weekend" by New Orleans Magazine, followed the traditional Uptown route along St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street with hundreds of thousands of spectators.

On the day following the parade, GAL performed an hour-long show at Washington Artillery Park, just across the street from New Orleans' renowned Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral, followed by a performance at the French Market stage on behalf of New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park. (Yes, we actually got to play a national park!)

This guy has been down in Jackson Square for so many years now. He comes and goes throughout the years because he's in the Army.



We loved the street performers/artists in New Orleans. I think this one right here was one of our favorites.






Leah in front of the many art pieces in New Orleans.


This guy cracks me up every time I see him (and the other guy who does the same bit). Go by him, give him a tip and just watch what happens.


He'll likely scare the crap out of you.

Then back to normal.


We headed up to Decatur and then stopped to watch part of the Barkus Parade. The Krewe of Barkus is made of canine friends. They get dressed up and their owners walk with them through a 15 block portion of the French Quarter area.







Stopped at Leah's Pralines which are my FAVORITE pralines but they were closed :(


And one more parade for good luck on Canal Street. Not much choice in stopping as there is little way across.

NOLA - Day Three

We decided to take it easy on our third day. After walking so much the past two days and being a few months pregnant I needed a break. At first I had planned for us to do a swamp tour and possibly something else with the tour company but I felt that wasn't the best thing do with Louis and Leah. They just needed to be able to go somewhere and run around, have fun. We didn't have a set schedule for our trip which made it easier for us to be flexible about what we were going to do with our days. I made a loose itinerary for each day with lots of options to choose from.

Our hotel was a block away from the Louisiana Children's Museum. The museum turned out to be the perfect choice. They had so much for the kids to do. We could've easily spent another day in the museum. We got to the museum early on in the day so it wasn't busy.

Neat electrostatic plasma light globe


Big scale for weight measurements


The skeleton body (Mr. Bones) also pedals the bike when you do.



Rock climbing


Microscope and lots of slides to look at


Local artist and school made this.


Fun bubble section





The museum has great child size replicas of a lot of famous areas in New Orleans. All hands on. This was one of the Julia Street Warehouse by the street car, about a block away from the hotel. You could load and unload the carrier ships.


Another area of the museum dealt with architecture with many opportunities for kids to learn how to build their own structures. This station was about the use of triangles in fortifying bridges.


Winn-Dixie is one of the larger grocery store chains in the South. They had a great replica called 'Little Winn-Dixie' for the kids to pretend-shop in.






A few other things they had was a replica of Mister Roger's Neighborhood that was well made and just like the show. They have Cajun cottages for the kids to play house in. They also had a toddler section called 'First Adventures' where Louis spent most of his time while Leah explored the rest of the museum.

After the museum trip we walked down to the Riverwalk and shopped for souvenirs and stopped for some lunch. Leah found a mask for our next parade viewing. Leah had a smoothie which she shared with Louis. Then she tried to have some and as you can see Louis was not cooperating. I ended up sending Leah out to the outside promenade to drink her smoothie in peace.





After lunch we walked around some more and then headed back uptown to go to view some more parades. This time we took the bus instead of the streetcar. On the weekends many of the parades contain more than one krewe. This parade had two krewes so twice the time, twice the beads.









Due to the nature of Mardi Gras parades and the fact they happen on the major streets in New Orleans the buses reroute during the parades and it takes a while for them to get back on schedule. Overall though it worked out pretty well. We walked about mile down and waiting for the bus. Matt grabbed some sandwiches from Subway while we waited. The buses are a great way to travel in New Orleans. The fare is 1.25 for the bus or streetcar. The drivers are used to tourists and we found them to be generally patient and helpful. Another thing you will notice when being down South is how much nicer everyone is when on public transit in comparison to New York City.

We made it back to the hotel in about 20 minutes, had our dinner and headed to bed. Overall it turned out to be a good day.