No surprise, I was awake around 6. Actually, given the time change, that might be a surprise. But I was pretty tired. The bigger surprise was how well I’d slept. This room is REALLY quiet. And that bed is really comfy!
Eventually Nick started waking up too, and we got ready for an early breakfast. Once ready we walked back over to Mother’s. At this hour (a little before 7:30) there was no line to get in the restaurant and basically no wait to order food too. I ordered a ham, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich on a biscuit and Nick got debris and cheese on a biscuit. Our food came out pretty quickly and breakfast was delicious! When you’re in New Orleans, go to Mother’s!
Breakfast eaten, we walked back to the hotel. On our way back to the room, I did a bit more picture taking.
We chilled at the hotel for awhile, waiting for the city to wake up. Then about 9:45 we headed out to get this day started! Our first stop was just a few blocks away, and we got there just after they opened. Vue Orleans is a new attraction since we were last in New Orleans. It’s part interactive museum, part observation deck. There’s a lot of high tech stuff both in the museum, which focuses on the culture of New Orleans and on the observation deck. We were both really impressed, and really hope that they get more traffic than we saw while we were there, because it’s the kind of place we hope can survive. The museum part isn’t large, but we enjoyed it, and the observation deck offers some cool views of the city and of the Mississippi. I was kind of wishing, though, that I had booked this for the next morning, so that we could have seen our ship in port, instead of the Carnival and Norwegian ships!
After we’d sufficiently taken in the views from Vue Orleans, we used the really nice path along the river to walk to Jackson Square. It was a beautiful day!
Pictures taken, we poked around in the shops in Jackson Square until it was time for our brunch reservation. It’s not often that we spend a Sunday in New Orleans, so I had booked us a Sunday Jazz Brunch at Muriel’s. We were seated almost immediately.
Brunch was great. There isn’t constant music; there’s a trio (maybe more than one?) that circulates through the various rooms. They were in the room we were seated in for a good portion of the time we were at Muriel’s, and their music was great. Service was great and the atmosphere was cool. Food and drinks were great too. I had a mimosa and the bananas foster pain perdu. Nick had a brandy milk punch and an omelet that was basically cajun seafood. We both really enjoyed our meals.
Meals thoroughly enjoyed, we headed back to the hotel, where Nick paid for that heavily cream based beverage.
Once Nick had recovered from his poor brunch choice, we headed downstairs and requested a Lyft, to our last tourist attraction for this portion of the trip.
It was a pretty quick ride over to Mardi Gras World. Mardi Gras World is at one of the (dozen+) warehouses where props are created for Mardi Gras parades in NOLA (and Universal) as well as holiday and theme park parades across the country. We were just in time for the 3:30 tour, which started with a 15 minute film and a slice of King Cake (which is basically cinnamon coffee cake). After cake, we were led into the warehouse to learn more about the process, and see LOTS of parade float props.
Mardi Gras World was also very worth the visit (even more so since I’d gotten a great Groupon/Rakuten deal over Black Friday weekend!). We enjoyed it and left kinda mind boggled by all that really goes into Mardi Gras.
Mardi Gras World does run free shuttles between there and the French Quarter, but the shuttle seemed to be a bit MIA when we were leaving and the shuttle stops were not particularly convenient to our hotel, so we requested another Lyft, and we were back at our hotel soon after.
Given how much we had eaten, and Nick’s issue with that cream based drink, we decided to not do anything major for dinner tonight. Instead we walked a couple blocks over to Brother’s, which is a convenience store, and got some fried chicken, which we took back to the hotel to eat. Sorry housekeepers! The chicken was as delicious as we remembered! Perfect seasoning, tender chicken, great breading…good stuff!
I managed to stay up until at least 9 tonight, which was progress! And then I crashed hard. It had been another great day of vacationing!
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