Day 4: Tuesday 4/28/15
Those blackout shades worked really well. I woke up just before 9 am. That would be central time. Uh, so much for picking up the rental car at 9? Guess I was tired.
Realizing that breakfast would be ending at 9:30, I quickly got ready and even Nick managed to wake up, and we headed down to breakfast about 9:15. We were pleased to find a still fully stocked buffet. I’ve been at too many hotels that started closing the buffet line half an hour or more before breakfast ends. Clearly these guys anticipate the night owls, because they were refilling items until 9:25.
Once we finished breakfast, we headed down to Canal Street to catch the street car. It was time to attempt to find our way to Enterprise. We did alright in this task. We only ended up one stop past where we needed to be, and were able to walk to where we needed to be. But, it was one of those neighborhoods that I don’t really want to go back to. We made it to Enterprise though. Lesson learned: next time, remember to call a few days ahead and set up the free shuttle to the rental car place.
The rental process was quick, and pretty soon we were navigating back to the hotel in a Chrysler 200. It was a very weird car, complete with a spin knob for shifting. I’ll explain the idiocy of THAT technology in a later chapter.
Thanks to the awesome grid that is New Orleans we were safely back at the hotel just a few minutes later. I held my breath and left the rental car with valet, because there was no other option, and we walked upstairs to get ready for the day. Once ready, we walked down to the river (less than a mile from the hotel). We had discovered the previous day that it was Navy week. Evidently there WAS a reason for a very large number of men and women in uniform wandering around the city. There were 6 or 7 military ships from all divisions, and a couple countries, in port, free for people to get on and explore. That’s right, free. So we shelved our plans of going outside the city to see some old plantation houses until the next trip, even though it was the reason we’d picked up the rental car today instead of departure day, and decided to hop on this opportunity to check out a big ship or two. Highest on our list to see was the USS Wasp.
It took us a little bit of wandering to figure out exactly where to enter to check out the ship. We found it eventually though, and after a quick trip through the metal detectors, we were headed onto the ship. The USS Wasp is a US Navy multipurpose amphibious assault ship. A lot of words for “It’s HUGE”. Having never been on one of our military ships before, I was in awe of the size. I was also really impressed with how genuinely excited the troops were to show off their ship. Pictures were encouraged, so I’ll let those do the rest of the talking.
Exploring the ship was pretty awesome. Even more awesome was the pride of the troops on board. Most awesome? There was a very elderly gentleman that was also touring the ship. He was sporting a “Navy” hat. EVERY single service person he came across saluted him, and a couple of the active guys took him by the elbow and personally guided him through the ship. That level of respect was really cool to see. I’m also not sure who was more excited, him, or them, which was cool to see too.
Once we were done exploring the ship, we decided it was time for lunch. Since the ship was docked essentially at the mall, and the foodcourt of the mall had chains that don’t exist in NH, we decided to just eat there. When Nick and I travel, we try VERY hard to eat only at restaurants we can’t eat at at home. We try mostly for strictly local restaurants, but we’ll also eat at chains, if said chain doesn’t exist in our area. We ended up getting food from Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, because it’s a chain we don’t have at home. We were incredibly impressed by the employee at the counter. She was SO efficient, polite, and helpful. She will go places. Obviously, with a name like that, we ate chicken fingers, and they were really good. We ate our lunch on the balcony outside the food court, staring at the USS Wasp. It really gave another perspective of how crazy big that ship is.
Once we finished lunch, we hopped on the street car and rode it along the river to the end of the line. We then went into the Old US Mint, because they are also part of that Louisiana State Museum collection and they have a jazz display. Remember, Nick is a huge jazz fan. Turns out the first floor was all about money production (after all, it was an old US Mint). The 2nd floor was where the jazz displays were. There were MANY pictures of different jazz musicians. There was also a display of instruments rescued from various musicians’ homes and restored. Many of these instruments had been severely damaged in Katrina. The pictures of the damage, compared to the restored instrument were amazing.
Once we finished at the Old US Mint, we decided it might be time for a break from touristing. So we hopped on the street car and took it to the stop near Cafe du Monde. We picked up two more orders of beignets to take back to the hotel. We also poked around the gift shop right next to Cafe du Monde where we tried New Orleans’ famous pralines for the first time (Nick liked ‘em. I wasn’t impressed. It was basically chewy peanut brittle.), and bought a few post cards for the eventual photo album. Then we hopped back on the street car and took it back to the mall, so that we only had to walk a few blocks to the hotel. Nick’s feet were tired. Time for me to take him back to Disney, to work those feet out again!
We hiked back to the hotel and changed into swimsuits. Then we went down (our room was on the 9th floor) to the 6th floor to access the rooftop swimming pool. We were confused too. Turns out the Drury recently expanded and added a second “tower”. That tower is shorter than the main tower (where our room was), and they put a rooftop pool and hot tub on it. We were kinda surprised by just how big this hotel was. We also had a surprise with our key cards in the elevator. My experience in both San Antonio and New Orleans is that Drury takes security seriously. We had been told at the check-in desk that to get to our room we would need to tap our key on the keypad in the elevator (Drury, like Disney, uses RFID keys). The elevator wouldn’t allow you to select a floor until you had. We had discovered over the course of our stay that this was only necessary to take the elevator up to our room, not to go down. Well, it turns out that the going down thing only worked if you were going to the lobby. Even going down from a floor with rooms on it, we had to tap our key to be allowed to select a floor with rooms on it (i.e., the 6th floor). Lesson learned.
So we found the pool and promptly explored. I was slightly disappointed that the wall was MUCH higher than the wall at the rooftop pool in San Antonio. I couldn’t see much without standing on a chair. Yes, I did find a chair so that I could check out the view. Shhh...being Italian, in a family full of absurdly tall people (mom’s side) has made me a chair-as-a-stepstool expert. Nick wished that he had found this place prior to all of those thunderstorms. He felt it would have been a perfect vantage point.
Once we’d finished exploring, we settled into the hot tub, and were joined about 2 minutes later by a group of 4 women. Listening to them talk, I couldn’t help but notice that they talked like us, and I was pretty sure I heard them mention a few landmarks that we are familiar with. After a few minutes they started a conversation with us, and as it turns out, they were a bunch of educators from NH. We chatted about what we all had done in New Orleans, and swapped tips. And we laughed about what a small world it is.
Once we were done with the hot tub, we headed back to our room to change and get ready for our last evening in New Orleans. First stop? Downstairs for our last round of complimentary drinks. Once the tequila sunrises and margaritas had been taken care of, we headed for the French Quarter, passing a random group of musicians as we entered the Quarter.
First stop was The Gumbo Shop, not for food, but for a cookbook to bring home. Yeah, we really liked it. But we had decided to go the drinks and apps route for dinner tonight, rather than a real dinner. Or so we thought.
After our stop at The Gumbo Shop, we headed over to Pat O’Brien’s. After a bit of debate, we decided to try the piano bar there. After we’d been seated and ordered hurricanes, we discovered that the food is only served out in the courtyard. Oh well. We enjoyed our drinks, and found that the piano bar was a LOT of fun.
We stayed for about an hour and then moved on, stopping to have our glasses boxed before we left. Apparently, if you are in the piano bar, your hurricanes get served in actual glasses, and they’re yours to keep. One of the bartenders was able to provide us with glasses for them, so that they’d travel a little easier.
As we were leaving Pat O’Brien’s, we ran into the NH crew we’d met at the hotel hot tub. After chatting with us, they’d decided to try the hurricanes. We chatted for a couple of minutes, they gave us some drink suggestions, and we headed off in different directions.
By now, Nick had decided that he wanted to try the fried chicken from Brothers. We’d read about it, and we’d walked by the place every day, multiple times a day. Supposedly it was the best in the city. So, we walked to Brothers and got the chicken. Brothers is a convenience store that happens to be open 24 hours a day, and serves fried chicken. Since it’s a convenience store, we took the chicken back to our hotel room to eat.
It really IS excellent fried chicken. Moist chicken, crispy breading, and just a bit of kick to it. We devoured the chicken and then started packing. In the morning it’s time to check out and drive to Alabama.
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