Once again, I was awake relatively early, and surprisingly so was Nick. Since the hotel breakfast had been boring the previous day, we decided to go out for breakfast before we finished packing. We had a couple good options, but decided to go to Mother’s because we knew with all that seating, we probably wouldn’t have to wait a horrific amount of time.
It was about a 10 minute walk from the hotel to Mother’s, which was plenty long enough. It was windy and about 48 degrees this morning. Yup, time to go home… When we got to Mother’s we were pleasantly surprised to find that there was not a line outside. We walked in, and joined the line along the counter. It moved quickly. It also steadily grew longer. Get here by 8:30!
We ordered, and found a table. A server came along pretty quickly to fetch our receipt. And then we waited. After about 15 minutes, just as we were wondering what was up, we heard a polite but heated exchange between our server and another employee. Seems something got lost in translation, and the other employee threw our food away. Needless to say, our food appeared rapidly after that exchange.
So what’d we eat on our last morning in NOLA? I had egg, ham and cheese on a biscuit. Nick had debris, grits, scrambled eggs and a biscuit. It should come as no surprise from these pictures that neither one of us finished our meals. We sure enjoyed trying though.
Once we’d admitted defeat (and wondered if we could get a dozen of those amazing biscuits back to NH safely), we waddled out of the restaurant, past a line that was much longer than we’d seen at lunch on Saturday. Go early folks!
We booked it back to the hotel, because we were pretty sure that the temperature had dropped while we were at Mother’s, and neither one of us had worn a jacket. Once we got back to the hotel, we finished packing, and tried to consolidate the food trash as much as possible. Then we relaxed, listening to the St Charles streetcar until it was just about checkout time.
Checkout was quick, and then I took some pictures in the lobby and in the connecting shopping center that we somehow hadn’t known existed until this morning. The door between the hotel and that hadn’t been open until today.
While I was checking out and picture taking, Nick was chilling with the luggage. When I returned to him, he suggested we go to the UPS store in that adjoining shopping center and see how much it’d cost to ship the pictures we bought in Jackson Square that we hadn’t found any spot for other than the bag they’d been given to us in (they are about an inch too big for my carry on suitcase that I had with me), rather than trying to find a spot for that bag on the plane. So we did.
We won’t discuss the fact that the cost of shipping and packaging was nearly as much as we had paid for the pictures. Or the fact that the lady behind the counter had already craftily taken possession of our pictures before even telling us the cost. But the pictures are currently in the possession of UPS, and we expect to have them delivered to us around January 3rd.
After handing over the pictures to UPS, we requested an Uber. About 2 minutes later, our driver, Mohammed arrived. Mohammed was not chatty at all, but he got us to the airport safely, in a clean car, and in good time. And because we haven’t gotten the hang of timing an Uber request, we arrived nearly 3 hours before flight time. Oh well!
Nick had bought a bottle of Sazerac (Rye?) alcohol to bring home, so we checked our luggage. We were both a bit surprised to see that NOLA did not have the self-tagging kiosks. We’ve flown a lot of Southwest flights in the last couple years, and this is the only airport we’ve seen in that time that doesn’t have them. The line still moved pretty quickly though.
MSY really is a small airport, so security was very close by. There was no one in the pre-check line, so there was no wait for the ID check. And then we both cruised through security. No issue at all with Nick’s belt. UHHHH.
We’re pretty sure they were doing TSA training that morning. There was a PACK of TSOs getting some sort of instruction. Brought a whole new meaning to Thousands Standing Around…
The airport was pretty quiet at that hour, so we walked the length of the B terminal. This ended up being pretty interesting. It seemed as though MSY had had a gate counter decorating contest or something. The counter at every gate was decorated. I only took pictures of the unoccupied ones.
We found a spot to just chill for awhile, before going in search of food, avoiding the gate until the flight before our’s left. I’m pretty sure that was just Nick’s strategy for keeping me from trying to sneak onto a flight. You see the flight right before ours from gate B4 was to Orlando. I clearly had the wrong boarding pass, since mine was for a flight to Baltimore from gate B4…
Getting food was a more interesting experience than anticipated. We had decided to divide and conquer, since Nick decided on a New Orleans hot dog, and that was not really what I wanted to eat before boarding a pressurized metal tube, so I went the sandwich route. This was easier said than done. I stood in the line at Subway for a good 20 minutes, moving maybe 10 feet, before finding a “bistro” with go sandwiches. This line was also slow moving, and they only had Fiji for water, so then I had to go to Hudson News for a water, where I found another line moving at the speed of southern.
By the time I met Nick at our gate, he thought I had decided to walk home or sneak on a different plane. I scarfed my (really good) sandwich, and then we got ready for boarding.
Our first flight was completely full, but actually pushed back from the gate a couple minutes early. It was an uneventful (but bumpy) flight, and we arrived in Baltimore 25 minutes early. This was a relief, as we were scheduled for just a 55 minute layover, and about 20 days earlier, my 55 minute layover in Baltimore turned into walking off one plane 14 minutes before getting in line to board the next. No concern there this time!
We found our next gate area and settled in. The flight next to ours was going to Providence, and there were lots of announcements about boarding, because there were only 80 people scheduled to fly on a plane that holds 175, so they needed to balance the plane during boarding. About the same time I finished chuckling and texting people about that, we were informed that only 112 people were scheduled on our 175 seat flight to Manchester, and we’d be experiencing a similar boarding set up.
Boarding was indeed interesting. Flight attendants had positioned themselves in certain rows, and you had to find seats behind them basically. Because Nick and I were relatively early boarders, but not quite early enough, we got shipped to the back of the bus. Row 28. But...he had the window and I had the aisle, with no one between us. After he had leaned on me for the entire 2 hour flight from NOLA, due to some bump in the wall next to him, it was nice to have some space!
Or so I thought. The man behind me was the classic seat grabber. Our flight to Manchester only lasted about an hour. He must have yanked the top of my seat 20 times in that hour. Not kidding.
Needless to say, I was thrilled to touch down early, even though it meant the holiday hooplah (5 Christmases in less than 36 hours...FAIL) was about to begin. Deplaning was quicker than usual, and our luggage appeared within minutes of us arriving at baggage claim. Ours was also some of the first luggage off the plane. And as an added bonus, the moose was dressed for Christmoose!
Nick’s parents met us curbside, and it was a quick ride back to their house, where the dogs were thrilled to see us, and we attempted to watch the Grinch before crashing for the night. I think Nick and his parents made it through the movie. I didn’t even come close.
Final thoughts:
We are even more in love with New Orleans than we were after our first trip. There’s just something special about that city. The people are amazing, the food is amazing, the spirit is amazing. Sure, it has big city problems. The closer you get to Bourbon Street, the more questionable things you smell. There are beggars. There’s crime. But that definitely does not define that city.
Christmas time in New Orleans was definitely special. I’d go again this time of year in a heartbeat. The atmosphere was amazing and the weather was really pleasant. We lucked out with the weather, but even the weather they had had earlier in the week (rain and 50s) would be an improvement over the tornado and southern swamp weather we experienced in April.
One of these years, our Christmas trip is going to be over Christmas, instead of racing home for Christmas.
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