After seeing how the other half vacation, we moved on to the last hotel on our Christmas decorations tour: the Hotel Monteleone. Now this is home to the famous (infamous?) Carousel Bar. If we had gotten here a bit later in the morning, or if the hotel decorations had been a bit more involved (you know, requiring more tourist time), we might have stuck around for a drink. Next time! The decorations here were nice, but not so exciting after what we’d already observed this morning.
Once we’d finished checking out the decorations, we decided to work our way toward lunch at the Pat O’Brien’s Courtyard Bar. It was a little early though, so we did some wandering, taking in the sights, sounds and shopping of the French Quarter.
When we were really ready for lunch, we headed over to the Courtyard entrance and were seated immediately. Lunch was hurricanes, crawfish etouffee for Nick, a muffaletta (no olive salad) for me, and hurricane cheesecake for dessert. It was all delicious! And those fries were some of the best fries we’ve ever had.
Pat O’Brien’s has multiple bars within their structure. If you’re sitting down at any of them, you’re served your hurricane in hurricane glasses, that you can take as souvenirs. If you return them, they give you $4 back in cash. You actually have to walk up to a bar to return them. We have 2 glasses from our last trip, that somewhat miraculously made it home, despite our 13 minute connection in Baltimore, and we really have no space for any more glassware in our house. So, after we had finished lunch, we returned the glasses, and put the money towards a hurricane to go ($9). That one was for Nick. The 26 oz hurricane was more than enough for me.
Hurricane in hand, we headed back to Jackson Square because...music and nice weather! And we found exactly that. In fact that somewhat phallic looking African harp created such nice music that Nick bought 3 CDs from the band we listened to for quite awhile. We also found some pictures to buy. Because our house with minimal wall space needs more artwork! And we got a good laugh out of the Jackson Square Santa. We just generally loved the atmosphere of Jackson Square this trip.
Once we’d had our fill of Jackson Square, and I’d sobered up enough to walk back to the hotel, that’s where we headed for a nice long nap.
We both slept for quite awhile, waking up just long enough to agree to cancel our dinner reservation, and then slept a bit more. I guess everything had finally caught up with us. Shortly after waking up for real, it became evident that the Saints had won their football game. How did we know? We could hear some band going down the street outside our hotel, and could tell from the reflecting lights (remember, 10th floor) that they had a police escort. We could also see the lights on the Superdome and other buildings looking gold.
We decided we were hungry, so we headed to Brothers for the real fried chicken. And quickly learned just how seriously this city takes its football. The atmosphere was seriously entertaining. This included the atmosphere in Brothers (“10% more and back of the line for Steelers fans!”). Brothers was hopping, and it was evident that many of the people had been at the game.
We got our fried chicken, and some candy for the plane (and, who am I kidding, the hotel room too), and took it back to the hotel to eat. This chicken was delicious!
Even though it was relatively early by NOLA standards, we decided we were basically done for the night, so we started packing and just relaxed. Tomorrow would be a long day.
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