New Orleans (Part 2): Tastes of New Orleans

For those that know me, it should come as no surprise that my favorite part of our recent trip down to the Bayou was centered around a food!

On day two of our trip, we took the Flavors of the French Quarter tour by Tastebud Tours. Tickets were $56 a person and you could choose between two different times. Our tour met at 11am and we basically spent the next 3 hours walking around New Orleans eating food. (Which is included in the price of the tour. The only thing that costs extra is if you want to buy alcoholic beverages at any of the restaurants or you want to purchase merchandise from the locations.)

Micah and I left our hotel around 10am and walked the almost mile to the meeting point on Decatur Street, down by the French Market. Once our group of 14 was assembled, we set off.

Our first stop was across the street (literally) at a place called Tujague's. The second oldest restaurant in New Orleans, Tujague's is known for inventing the drink "the Grasshopper" and also for its mirror behind the bar, which was shipped from France in the 1800's. Our tour guide said what made this impressive was that it was shipped AS IS (all in one piece), and it arrived and has hung, STILL all in one piece ever since.

Our dish from Tujagues was Red Beans and Rice. Which- I'll be honest- I wasn't thrilled about when I heard that was our first dish, BUT, it was actually quite good and I ate all of it. 

Our second stop was a candy shop a few blocks away called Laura's Candies. 

 

Without a doubt, the best part of this stop was the ALL YOU CAN EAT FREE SAMPLES found around the store. I tried 4 different kinds of Pralines (Micah's new favorite thing), some flavored almond barks, a Mississippi Mud fudge, and they give you an entire Praline to go when you leave! (**this is one of the stops that several of the other tour members bought extra items after trying them, and had we wanted to carry a bag around with us, we would have too! If this had been the last stop of the tour, I think we would have ended up spending $50 before I could get Micah out of there. **Feel free to insert the "kid in a candy store" joke**)

Stop number three was, again, a few more blocks away, but our tour guide did an excellent job of taking us down the "less traveled" streets so we could get a feel for the 'real New Orleans'. The scenery was gorgeous, and the rain they called for earlier in the week seemed to change its mind and we had a beautiful day of nearly 80 degrees to enjoy. 

I am going to apologize now, because it's at this point that my camera decided when it was going to work. I took so many pictures and when I got back to the hotel, I realized that half of them were nowhere to be found! 

Stop three was at a fun hole-in-the wall place called Old Coffee Pot Gumbo. This was a neat little place and we were seated in their outdoor garden area. The walls were painted with frescoes of Old New Orleans. (This was one of the many photos that 'disappeared' from my phone...thanks, Google Photos.)

This was one of my favorite stops of the day because we got to try TWO menu items. Gumbo and Jambalaya. It was also here that we learned the difference between Creole and Cajun. Creole is the native New Orleans style of cooking and Cajun sort of encompasses the entire state of Louisiana. So when you say that you are going to New Orleans to eat Cajun food, you're not TECHNICALLY wrong- since you're still in the state of New Orleans, but you're probably incorrect if you're eating locally in New Orleans since most places cook in the Creole style. 

This was the seafood Gumbo. My Jambalaya picture disappeared. But, both were surprisingly very good. I was nervous about the Gumbo- and they brought that first. It was a chicken-broth base, with rice, okra, oysters, carrots, shrimp, and various herbs and spices. I don't like shrimp very well, but the soup base was delicious. I ate everything except for the big pieces of shrimp. 

The Jambalaya was a tomato/rice base (so it had an orange-red color and was thick enough of a dish you could eat it with a fork or a spoon). It had sausage, chicken, and some spice to it. I love spicy food, and since they serve you a big glass of ice water at every location, I would have even added a little more spice to it, had it been an option.  I ate all of that in its entirety, it was delicious. I could have ordered it in a 5 gallon bucket and brought it home with us. 

Our next stop brought us to Bourbon Street- to a place called Nola Po'boys. Guess what they serve? Yep, ice cream! (Ok, they did have an ice cream counter, but they serve 40-something kinds of Po'boy sandwiches. 

It was here that if we weren't on a tour and I had ordered something, I would have walked out. We were treated as an inconvenience, and all three staff members that we interacted with were completely rude to us. It's not like we were filling up their main dining room and taking seats away from their 'real customers', as they had a room in the back for the tours to sit in. Even our tour guide said something to the effect of "I guess everyone is having a bad morning today" so that makes me think that perhaps they aren't always this rude...but still! 

At this stop we got nearly half of a roast beef po'boy. It was roast beef, lettuce, mayo, and a heaping helping of gravy all smashed between a fresh baked baguette. Our tour guide joked with us that no one gets any utensils, and you only get 7 napkins. She then wished us luck. 

I picked mine up, and all the contents immediately slid out of the bread into the paper they had put down for us. I had a picture of my sandwich fail, but it was in the photos that disappeared, unfortunately. I still managed to eat most of the sandwich with my fingers and what I tasted was heavenly. I am not usually a fan of mayo, but it worked well with the gravy, meat, and lettuce. Had they not been so rude to us, we might have gone back for dinner that night and gotten full size sandwiches (and maybe a plastic fork). 

By this time, I'm feeling pretty comfortably full, and that's good because I wasn't too thrilled about our last menu item, Shrimp and Grits. By this time, we had walked about a mile and looped back sort-of near our starting point, but farther down the street. 

A cute little cafe called Saint Cecilia. It had a decently welcoming feel, but they were very strict about where we could sit and we couldn't move chairs around. (the bachelorette party that was on our tour were the only ones that really seemed to care that they couldn't all pile around one table, but whatever)

It was here that we were served the 'famous' shrimp and grits. Again, I'm not a huge fan of shrimp but boiled shrimp is my least favorite. Sure enough, they brought us three boiled shrimp smothered in a special BBQ-esque sauce, all on top of a scoop of cheese grits. Knowing full well that I probably wouldn't care for it, I nibbled at a piece of shrimp and honestly, I was surprised. The shrimp isn't what I disliked!.. It was that sauce. It was sweet but also left a tangy/sour taste in your mouth; it tasted vaguely smoky, like they had tried to go for a smoky sweet BBQ, but had accidentally dumped too much vinegar in the mix and as a result, the sauce was almost too bitter and was runny like a beverage, not thick like what I typically envision BBQ sauce or gravy. It was bad enough that I offered my shrimp to Micah and he declined (he LOVES shrimp). I couldn't even eat the cheese grits on the bottom because they had dumped that sauce all over the dish and by it being so thin and runny, it had soaked down into the entire bowl. I envied the girl sitting next to me a little bit, she had a shellfish allergy so the restaurant had brought her a bowl of just the cheese grits, which she offered to share with me because her bowl was almost the size of a platter (had I been actually hungry, I might have accepted and shared a bowl of food with a stranger). 

I'm no food critic and I would certainly eat at Saint Cecilia Cafe again, but the shrimp and grits...weren't for me. Or anyone else at our particular table. 

Our tour ended after this. We were across the street from the Old US Mint, so we decided to walk around the front of the building and check it out. It was free admission, after all. 

The first floor was all we really cared about seeing, and that was the actual old Mint part. The top two floors were a jazz/art museum. 

It took us about 20 minutes to go through the part that we wanted to, and then we went to the second floor to sit on a bench inside the art museum while we figured out a plan of action to see as much of the city as we could in one afternoon. We decided to walk down a few more blocks and catch the cable/streetcar. Day passes were $3 a person and a single day pass was good for any line in the city. So we started by riding the blue line, which was down by the river (where we were currently wandering around). They had the windows on the streetcar open, and the ride was very enjoyable to our tired feet. 

We got back into the downtown area and hopped on the red line, which took us through the main street/heart of the city, all the way out to Mid-town. Then we came back on the green line and walked back to the hotel to shower and change for dinner. 

They also had lines that took you out to the cemeteries, and several other lines we didn't get to ride, (brown, orange, purple..grey?) but we were tired from walking around for the last 3 hours. We had dinner at a little pizza place down the street from the hotel and had the entire indoor dining room to ourselves. It was a nice change from being in a crowd of people all day. Plus the pizza was good, the two of us finished off a large by ourselves...I might have helped, a lot, with that.. (hey, baby was hungry!)

So, overall thoughts: 

Could I live in New Orleans? -No. 

Could I spend a week there? -Probably... just maybe not the week AFTER Mardi Gras and the week BEFORE St. Patrick's Day. 

-I really enjoyed the cuisine, and there were a ton of things we could have done, had we wanted to spend the money and had the leisurely time to do them. There are tons of tours and events, if you do some research. Swamp tours, ghost and vampire tours, voodoo tours/museums, dinner cruises down the Mississippi, heck- you could just wander around listening to the different bands and street performers- there's definitely enough to do. Even for families with small children, they have an aquarium and a children's museum. Granted, I'm sure there are more things for families to do but those are the two things that we came across in our two days in the Big Easy.

Would I go back? - Yes, I think so. Micah and I agreed that next time, though, it would be ideal to have a little group, or at least another couple to go do some of these things with. (And me preferably NOT be pregnant. After 3 hours of walking, my feet were pretty swollen and I'm sure I got cranky...)

These next few weeks (ok, months) are already booked up, so on to the next adventure! Life doesn't slow down, so neither can we. 

New Orleans, Louisiana (Part 1)

Stop number 2 on our spring break road trip adventure brought us to downtown New Orleans! I had booked our hotel online about a week and half before, and let me tell you, I did a LOT of research. I wanted a hotel that:

• Wouldn't cost over $200 a night
• Was close (walking distance) to the French Quarter
• Had breakfast and Wi-Fi included in nightly price
• Had Free Parking
• Easy to get to from the interstate

...yeah, needless to say I didn't find all of those requirements in a downtown major United States city. BUT, I did find one that met MOST of them. You guessed it, the Holiday Inn Express.. 


(Everyone ready? All together now... "Oooh! Ahhh!!")

Ok, I know I mentioned in the last post that I have good luck with the Holiday Inn Expresses, but I promise, this time I hadn't set out looking for it. I had actually wanted to stay in one of the many hotels that were native only to New Orleans. You know, the adorable little bed and breakfasts, the charming old hotels directly on Bourbon St., immerse ourselves fully in downtown crowds and noise, listening to the sounds of live New Orleans Jazz music floating into the night from our open air balcony, to get the full feel of the Cajun/Creole hospitality. 

But...that comes with a price, and unfortunately, I wasn't willing to pay for it. So we settled on the Holiday Inn Express because it covered all of my above bullet points minus the parking, but the hotel parking pass was $30 a day, and we would end paying that (or more) for parking in a garage or at a street meter for all day/night anyway. 

I am a self-proclaimed "planner" and I was so proud of myself because this trip, I had only planned one thing, outside of booking us a hotel in advance. So upon our arrival and check-in, we decided to just take off walking in one direction and see where we ended up. After all, since starting our road trip the day before, we had spent over 10 hours in our car. It was time to get out and move our tired leg muscles. 

First impressions of the boisterous city of New Orleans:

I can definitely see some charm to this city, with its narrow streets, palm trees, and streetcars

Oh, and apparently Mardi Gras beads are everywhere

Notice the Mardi Gras beads to the far left and on the balcony above the sign.. 

Turns out, our hotel was about .3 (three-tenths) of a mile from the famous Bourbon Street, so we ended up there. We were greeted to Bourbon Street by a marching band (naturally) 

Walking down Bourbon Street reminded me somewhat of the famous Beale Street in Memphis. It is crowded, closed to vehicle traffic, and is lined with shops, bars, and restaurants who all have people in front of each business hassling you, and telling you why their beer is the best or this restaurant's food is the most authentic in all of New Orleans. 

I had seen on our map that there was a park not too far down on Bourbon Street where they had advertised live jazz music daily, so I wanted to check that out, and Micah was more than happy to oblige. We ended up eating dinner here, as well. I got a Decatur Club sandwich and he got Jambalaya (which was spicy deliciousness, I tried some :) ) and we got Beignettes for dessert. (Basically a funnel cake but cut into the size and shape of dinner rolls) 

I would certainly recommend checking out the musical legends park and eating a meal there. The Cafe Beignet was fairly reasonable, as our two meals and an order of Beignettes for dessert came out for $25 and some change. Plus, you get to eat in an intimate open air setting right in the middle of Bourbon Street with a live band playing New Orleans jazz music. 

There was a gust of wind at one point while we were eating, it wasn't super strong but it caught just right and it knocked over the band's tip bucket that was sitting on a (somewhat) rickety card table in front of the stage and money went all over the ground. Micah and another man from the audience picked it up for them because the band didn't even bat an eye. They saw their money bucket fall over and kept performing. I thought that was amazing in itself, and after their number, the trombone player came and gave both Micah and the other man that picked up everything a free CD, so I'm looking forward to listening to that on our 10 hour drive home. 

(**Side note/update: My favorite tracks are #1 and #8) 

We spent the rest of the evening in the hotel watching TV and relaxing from the day of driving. 

The Old Capitol Museum- Jackson, Mississippi

This year for Micah's spring break, we decided it had been a while since our last road trip, so... away we went! We left Wednesday in the late afternoon, and I took Thursday-Friday off work, so a little getaway in order.

Other than a one day visit down to Oxford in the fall of 2011 to visit our friend Drew while he was attending college at Ole Miss, we had never adventured to Mississippi before. Although, the day we chose to drive down to Ole Miss just happened to be an Alabama Roll Tide/Ole Miss Rebels football game, so apparently we got the "full college football experience" tailgating in The Grove and weaving our way through the masses of upwards of 60,000 people packed onto a college campus...but that story can be for another time :)

I had sort-of Google stalked some towns in Mississippi along Interstate 55 and decided that our goal for Wednesday night would be to get 5 to 5.5 hours down the road and stay overnight.

We chose the Holiday Inn Express (or what I thought was the holiday inn express) as our first choice in Batesville, Mississippi. I have always had good luck with Holiday Inn Expresses, so when it's an option, I usually pick them over some of the other chain hotels.

Upon our arrival though, I came to find out that Google was wrong. There was no Express here...Only a Holiday Inn. I was pretty sure that those are generally more expensive than the Holiday Inn Epress-es, and don't include breakfast.
I was right! However: Our room was decent, the showers were hot, and the manager was in good humors that evening when we arrived and gave me $10 off the rate I was first told. So we got our room for under $100.

After checking out Thursday morning, I was hungry, since I didn't get my free continental breakfast that I was expecting, but that's alright because Micah took me to the Huddle House and I got a Mississippi helping of hashbrowns, sausuage, eggs, bacon, cheese, toast, and gravy. ALL in one big pile. My pregnant-self couldn't have been happier.

God bless Mississippi. 

We got back on I-55 and drove two hours down the road to Jackson, Mississippi. Other than Jackson being the state capitol, I didn't know much else about the city (or the state of Mississippi, for that matter) So, we decided to take a detour to visit the Old Capitol Museum, located on State Street, a short drive from the Interstate. Oh, and the best part, it's FREE admission and parking!

It was a picture perfect day: sunny, 74 degrees, not a cloud in the sky.

Upon entrance to the building, you are greeted with gorgeous wrap-around staircases to the right and left, with the main foyer straight ahead. This particular picture was taken of the left staircase, where you can also see a table of brochures of other activities and things to do in the city. 

The main foyer where the help desk is located is in the center of the building, right under the impressive dome. Standing and looking straight up makes you feel so small. 

The first floor focuses on the capitol building itself with a little bit of Mississippi history thrown in there as well. We watched a short video telling the history of the capitol building, WHY they built it where they did, learned about the different renovations that have gone into the restoring it, and a little bit of Mississippi's involvement in the Civil War. 

The second floor has bathrooms (which were actually pretty amazing. The women's room smelled like bubble bath!) and then at each end of the building you can go into the Senate room and the House room. This is the room where the House of Representatives met.

You can also view the congressional library, and let me just say, my inner Beauty and the Beast might have swooned a little bit over the floor to ceiling bookshelves... I asked Micah to build me some. He laughed.

The third floor mostly displayed portraits of famous people from Mississippi. Everyone from the governors and first ladies, to war generals, to an artist that sold pottery and his work currently sells for 100's of thousands of dollars. Actually, I wish I remembered his name, because his formal painted portrait stood out from all the others. The Governors and First Ladies were all posed "properly" and wore their finest clothes...this artist is painted in overalls, a hat with holes in it and a shirt with rolled up sleeves. 

Anyways, the Old Capitol Museum is certainly worth stopping at if you are going through Jackson Mississippi. I don't think you could spend all day there, but certainly it's worth an hour or two.

I almost wish I had allotted for more time to be spent exploring Mississippi. Staying in one hotel and visiting one museum is hardly a bias to go on when speaking for an entire state, but on first impression, (well, technically second impression) Mississippi seems nice. I look forward to future adventures!