New Orleans - May 2018

Our first three days in New Orleans | Second Three Days

Out hotel is in the Garden District, right on St Charles Avenue and the historic St Charles dark green vintage streetcars which have been in operation for almost 100 years. So for our first venture, we took this streetcar to the western end of the line, about 10 miles. We passed endless Victorian mansions along the tree-lined boulevard ending uptown, at South Carrollton Avenue and South Claiborne Avenue. Then we headed back stopping at the Camellia Grill, an interesting deli frozen in time from the 1950s for some unique New Orleans food, particularly the chocolate pecan pie a la mode. KarenI had her first Southern food, fried catfish and corn with Cajun. We continued back on the St Charles line past our hotel east towards Canal Street and the French Quarter. The following day we started out early in the French Quarter to sample a Beignet. Pretty simple— fried bread dough coated with powder sugar (just like Mom used to make whenever she made fresh bread…loved it then loved it now) but we were glad we tried it. Then we went to a farmer’s market west of our hotel and continued on in this area to find a bakery and stocked up on many great looking baked goods that should last the rest of our trip. Stopped at a grocery store similar to our Four Seasons in Portland, dropped off our food and then we took the red Canal streetcar up to City Park, a large park in the north end that also has an art museum, sculpture garden and Botanical garden. We had a wedding cake snowball here. It was very refreshing on a hot and humid day. Then we headed back south to the riverfront area to check that out. After a brief attempt at walking along the Mississippi, we decided to wait for another day…to hot! We started out our third day early again in the French Quarter but with a goal to walk more extensively all through this area. We had lunch at Central Grocery having a muffuletta. We each ordered a half-size but then ate just half of that. Delicious. We walked most of the streets in the French Quarter including Jackson Square, the French Market in the waterfront area. We stopped for a Pimm Cup, a gin and lemonade drink with a slice of cucumber, at the Napoleon House where it originated.

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