January 2019 road trip - New Orleans and Biloxi MS, days 3-7
Not a lot of photos for this leg of the journey.
We spent 4 nights in New Orleans at the Maison Du Puy hotel in the French Quarter. The weather was cool on some days but two days were about 70.
It didn't take long for all 3 of us (Brian's friend from Vermont being the third) to decide that we weren't crazy about New Orleans. It wasn't that anything awful happened there it just isn't our style. Even our hotel rooms had a constant background noise. For Brian and I, facing the courtyard, our noise was the quiet but incessant New Orleans style jazz music played in the courtyard, seemingly 24 hours a day. For Jim, facing the street, he had a variety of loud cars, ambulances, people fighting, screaming and hollering each night. The streets in the Quarter are ALL narrow one ways and not much sun gets through the tightly packed buildings and sometimes there are a lot of stacked up cars and some honking etc. It strangely felt like what NYC might have felt like 100 years ago in that it is very densely built up and constantly in motion.
We did have some good experiences with friendly people at a few bars. The restaurants were a mixed bag service wise. The lunch we had right after picking Jim up from the airport (our first tentative venture into the quarter) was tasty and the service was friendly albeit extremely slow. The very slow pace of service was a frequent issue in NOLA. We realize you don't go to the French Quarter for fast food but considering how quiet it was and our clear ability to see that some of the servers did a lot of chatting with other servers etc, it could have been better adapted to our needs and at some of the better places it was. The breakfast in the bistro downstairs from our hotel the first morning was very poor in both food and service. We had an enjoyable lunch in a bar near our hotel with a very busy but hardworking bartender providing great service and, unexpectedly, 2 great meals from the bistro in the 700 Club (bar). The macaroni and cheese was so indulgent and rich and everything else we had there on both visits was top notch. I also enjoyed the local Amber beer and a rum punch or two but overall we didn't drink much.
Friday we went across the Lake Ponchartrain causeway (27 miles of bridge!) and visited Fontainebleau state park where we did a couple flat miles of hiking around some sugar plantation ruins and walked out on a boardwalk over a marsh. Didn't see any alligators but it was peaceful and very Louisiana. After the walk, we returned to New Orleans going around the lake instead of over it and explored some of the Lower Ninth Ward and nearby areas that have a lot of visible destruction still from hurricane Katrina. It was interesting in a sort of morbid way and its clear that New Orleans today has a lot fewer residents than it did before the storm. Friday evening we got dressed up and went to Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré to see A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder which was a nearly flawless experiences. The play was the most nominated broadway plan in 2014 and easily one of the best plays any of us had seen in a long time, if ever. It was very funny with some memorable songs and a well performed score which floated out of the very strange hole above the orchestra pit in the middle of the stage. The producers even incorporated the hole in the stage for a few sight gags etc.
On Saturday the weather forecast was poor with strong winds so we headed to Biloxi Mississippi which was about 80 miles west of New Orleans. The drive on US-90 was serene and almost eerily devoid of cars most of the way. We stopped at one out of the way casino, the Silver Slipper for a brief distraction early in the trip. Once we got to Biloxi we toured Beauvoir, the home of Jefferson David, Confederate president from 1861 to 1865. Our tour guide, Donna was a great southern story teller who seemed to be from another time, especially with her period costume. The tour group was large and seemed to mostly be Southerners and thankfully there were no children on our tour. After the house tour I needed to get laundry done unfortunately, so we dealt with that then too.
Sunday we did a car tour of the garden district finishing at the lovely coffee shop and book store in the Rink. After a quick souvenir/gift run through the Quarter we had lunch at the bistro in the 700 club and then returned to the hotel. I stayed in for a nap and some downtime and Jim and Brian visited Harrah's casino right in town. The Saints were playing the Rams and fans and watchers of the game seemed to be everywhere. Right as the game was ending we were walking into The Court of Two Sisters, an enduring New Orleans institution that served the most formal and traditional Louisiana fare we had the whole trip. It was a very nice experience including a charming conversation with some fellow diners from Connecticut and New Jersey thanks to Jim's outgoing personality.
Monday morning we wasted no time leaving town heading North on US-61 through Baton Rouge. The drive was mostly relaxing and sunny clear weather was appreciated. Baton Rouge was basically empty downtown. The state offices are all closed for Martin Luther King Day and there weren't even very many cars driving around. The riverboat casino we stopped in was fun and we did well there but it too was almost deserted. We got in a nice stroll along the very wide Mississippi river walk and probably clocked about 2 miles in total there.
Brian took over driving out of Baton Rouge and as I write this we are in Mississippi near Natchez. Our goal for the day is Little Rock Arkansas, about 280 miles away at this point. It feels great to have been to New Orleans but it was also a relief to be done in New Orleans which seemed to be a sensory assault almost all the time. One of the things that helped the most in New Orleans was the Bellman/Valet person Marvin. From the moment we arrived he had great advice on how to save money on parking at the hotel instead of awkward off-site parking I was going to do instead. This served us very well because we went out in the car every day except the day we arrived. He also had numerous helpful hints and ideas for places to go and opinions on what was interesting etc. He's a very genuine person who we enjoyed interacting with many times over the course of four days.
It isn't likely we will ever return to New Orleans but if I had some reason to be there such as a conference or whatever I would make sure to stay in the central business district which is very near but also very different than the French Quarter.
More to come in a few days.
The causeway and Fontainebleau park:
A random shot from the Quarter:
We spent 4 nights in New Orleans at the Maison Du Puy hotel in the French Quarter. The weather was cool on some days but two days were about 70.
It didn't take long for all 3 of us (Brian's friend from Vermont being the third) to decide that we weren't crazy about New Orleans. It wasn't that anything awful happened there it just isn't our style. Even our hotel rooms had a constant background noise. For Brian and I, facing the courtyard, our noise was the quiet but incessant New Orleans style jazz music played in the courtyard, seemingly 24 hours a day. For Jim, facing the street, he had a variety of loud cars, ambulances, people fighting, screaming and hollering each night. The streets in the Quarter are ALL narrow one ways and not much sun gets through the tightly packed buildings and sometimes there are a lot of stacked up cars and some honking etc. It strangely felt like what NYC might have felt like 100 years ago in that it is very densely built up and constantly in motion.
We did have some good experiences with friendly people at a few bars. The restaurants were a mixed bag service wise. The lunch we had right after picking Jim up from the airport (our first tentative venture into the quarter) was tasty and the service was friendly albeit extremely slow. The very slow pace of service was a frequent issue in NOLA. We realize you don't go to the French Quarter for fast food but considering how quiet it was and our clear ability to see that some of the servers did a lot of chatting with other servers etc, it could have been better adapted to our needs and at some of the better places it was. The breakfast in the bistro downstairs from our hotel the first morning was very poor in both food and service. We had an enjoyable lunch in a bar near our hotel with a very busy but hardworking bartender providing great service and, unexpectedly, 2 great meals from the bistro in the 700 Club (bar). The macaroni and cheese was so indulgent and rich and everything else we had there on both visits was top notch. I also enjoyed the local Amber beer and a rum punch or two but overall we didn't drink much.
Friday we went across the Lake Ponchartrain causeway (27 miles of bridge!) and visited Fontainebleau state park where we did a couple flat miles of hiking around some sugar plantation ruins and walked out on a boardwalk over a marsh. Didn't see any alligators but it was peaceful and very Louisiana. After the walk, we returned to New Orleans going around the lake instead of over it and explored some of the Lower Ninth Ward and nearby areas that have a lot of visible destruction still from hurricane Katrina. It was interesting in a sort of morbid way and its clear that New Orleans today has a lot fewer residents than it did before the storm. Friday evening we got dressed up and went to Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré to see A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder which was a nearly flawless experiences. The play was the most nominated broadway plan in 2014 and easily one of the best plays any of us had seen in a long time, if ever. It was very funny with some memorable songs and a well performed score which floated out of the very strange hole above the orchestra pit in the middle of the stage. The producers even incorporated the hole in the stage for a few sight gags etc.
On Saturday the weather forecast was poor with strong winds so we headed to Biloxi Mississippi which was about 80 miles west of New Orleans. The drive on US-90 was serene and almost eerily devoid of cars most of the way. We stopped at one out of the way casino, the Silver Slipper for a brief distraction early in the trip. Once we got to Biloxi we toured Beauvoir, the home of Jefferson David, Confederate president from 1861 to 1865. Our tour guide, Donna was a great southern story teller who seemed to be from another time, especially with her period costume. The tour group was large and seemed to mostly be Southerners and thankfully there were no children on our tour. After the house tour I needed to get laundry done unfortunately, so we dealt with that then too.
Sunday we did a car tour of the garden district finishing at the lovely coffee shop and book store in the Rink. After a quick souvenir/gift run through the Quarter we had lunch at the bistro in the 700 club and then returned to the hotel. I stayed in for a nap and some downtime and Jim and Brian visited Harrah's casino right in town. The Saints were playing the Rams and fans and watchers of the game seemed to be everywhere. Right as the game was ending we were walking into The Court of Two Sisters, an enduring New Orleans institution that served the most formal and traditional Louisiana fare we had the whole trip. It was a very nice experience including a charming conversation with some fellow diners from Connecticut and New Jersey thanks to Jim's outgoing personality.
Monday morning we wasted no time leaving town heading North on US-61 through Baton Rouge. The drive was mostly relaxing and sunny clear weather was appreciated. Baton Rouge was basically empty downtown. The state offices are all closed for Martin Luther King Day and there weren't even very many cars driving around. The riverboat casino we stopped in was fun and we did well there but it too was almost deserted. We got in a nice stroll along the very wide Mississippi river walk and probably clocked about 2 miles in total there.
Brian took over driving out of Baton Rouge and as I write this we are in Mississippi near Natchez. Our goal for the day is Little Rock Arkansas, about 280 miles away at this point. It feels great to have been to New Orleans but it was also a relief to be done in New Orleans which seemed to be a sensory assault almost all the time. One of the things that helped the most in New Orleans was the Bellman/Valet person Marvin. From the moment we arrived he had great advice on how to save money on parking at the hotel instead of awkward off-site parking I was going to do instead. This served us very well because we went out in the car every day except the day we arrived. He also had numerous helpful hints and ideas for places to go and opinions on what was interesting etc. He's a very genuine person who we enjoyed interacting with many times over the course of four days.
It isn't likely we will ever return to New Orleans but if I had some reason to be there such as a conference or whatever I would make sure to stay in the central business district which is very near but also very different than the French Quarter.
More to come in a few days.
The causeway and Fontainebleau park:
A random shot from the Quarter:
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