Day 36 ( 8/3) New Orleans. (Lin) Another lovely late start to the day. It was raining when we woke up, so we felt no rush to get out and sightsee. When the weather cleared up around 11 am, we headed outside to explore the French Quarter. Our hotel is half a block off of Bourbon Street (ahem), so the kids got a quick but tame 11 am introduction to that. We stopped at the St. Louis Cathedral at the edge of Jackson Square – which claims to be the oldest Catholic cathedral in North America (1720).

From there it was to Cafe du Monde, of course, for several orders of their amazing beignets—French rectangular donuts smothered in powdered sugar. Nom nom!

From there it was a meandering route through some touristy stores, the French Market (an amazing stretch of food places and street vendors, where we bought yummy cheese and a baguette sandwich), and the National Park Services Historical Park – dedicated to New Orleans and jazz. Harrison and Helena completed the Junior Ranger program (#10!) while we watched a live jazz group from Denver, CO, tear it up.

Having learned a bit about New Orleans and jazz, we headed to the banks of the Mississippi, which we had first seen far to the north, in Minneapolis. If you’ve been to New Orleans, you know that when you stand on the banks of the Mississippi on the French Quarter side, you expect the river to flow left to right, but in fact it flows right to left, due to some crazy bends and curves ins the river. Anyway, it is really wide here, and of course super dirty, having traversed much of the midwest before arriving here.

We left the river, walked up Canal St., and caught a trolley to the Garden District, where we spent a hot, sweaty, hour viewing some of the largest and most beautiful houses there – often with ornate vegetation and gardens. Really beautiful and lush. The kids also loved all the different kinds of lizards we kept seeing – they are everywhere! I wonder how many show up in houses.

After a trolley ride back to the French Quarter, we walked to our hotel and had a lovely relaxing evening swimming and eating poolside.

And then: date night! Woot. Put the kids to bed and headed out to Lafitte’s on Bourbon St. – the oldest continuous pub in America, supposedly. Good times.

DCIM103GOPRO