Justin, Jennifer, Ellie & Silas: Summer Cruise 2011: New Orleans

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Summer Cruise 2011: New Orleans

We had built in 2 days to spend some time in New Orleans - remember this is before we knew it was so scary. Sunday we disembarked which went pretty smoothly and took a cab over to our hotel which was right near Bourbon Street. We got there at like 10 am and they let us check in which we were quite happy about!! We got to our rooms, freshened up a bit and got acquainted with our surroundings then headed out to find the zoo. We got a little turned around - most likely because it was so hot I felt as if I were melting - and ended up stopping in at a Bubba Gump's for lunch. We then found our way to the Natchez Steamboat Tour area, which was one of the things we had wanted to do, so we booked a dinner tour for that night as well as a plantation tour for the following day.

{View}

{Canal Street - view from our balcony}

We then stumbled upon the Aquarium and decided to go in there to cool off lest we die! Poor Ellie was so hot and sweaty - she managed to fall asleep in her stroller when we got into the aquarium so we let her sleep and cool off for a while. This was a pretty cool aquarium - and we have been to TONS of aquariums - and Ellie really enjoyed herself here.

We then headed over (reluctantly leaving the safety of our air conditioned venue) to let Ellie run off some energy at a neighboring hotel - we took her to the ballroom/conference room area and let the girl run wild! We then headed over to the steam boat tour which included dinner and was SUPER tasty. They had chicken, fish, dirty rice, salad, bread, steamed veggies, and cobbler. They also had a band playing on board and all of this was as we cruised up and down the river. It was great except the boat horns were really really loud and freaked Ellie out. She and I had to go to a lower level to escape the noise - poor thing.

FYI: When we returned from our trip I read that some actor was found dead right by this boat on Wednesday and it was presumed that he drowned on Monday which was the night we were on this tour. Creepy.

The next day we headed out for our plantation tour!

When we got back to our hotel we headed over to check out Bourbon street -- my oh my!! I didn't feel comfortable taking pics here - let's just say there were lots of scantily clad females selling their wares at establishments that promoted their wares. yeah....lets just say that. We felt really bad for being there with Ellie, however we had no idea this street was like this ALL the time. But we were there - honest.

Our final night we took a Street Car to the Garden District - we had read really good things about it and were excited to head out. We hopped on and about 5 minutes into the trip something broke on the track. We had (sitting in the street car with a toddler) to wait for 10 minutes or so for a few drivers to figure out what to do. We then headed out -- only to then figure out that this man's car was going in to the "yard" for the night and we were going to have to transfer cars. So we hopped on another car (with Ellie, backpacks and stroller) only to then find out he was going to have to turn around and go back the other way (the route we had already gone) to get us back to Canal Street - and we had to pay again. So what should have been a 30 minute ride took us well over an hour.