Around The World

We had planned to be up early today but that didn’t happen. We ended up getting down to breafast around 10:00 am.
We enjoyed a nice breakfast while putting together a list of things to see and do today.

By the time we finished breakfast, got organised, and left the hotel, it was about 11:15 am. We walked down to the corner of Carondelet and Poydras and caught a tram to the Garden District. The tram ride was pretty slow due to the number of people getting on at each stop so it was after midday when we disembarked from the tram at the intersection of St Charles and Cadiz. We walked south on Cadiz Street to Magazine Street, stopping many times along the way to admire the pretty houses. Many houses still had Mardi Gras beads and decorations on display.

We turned off Cadiz Street when we got to Magazine Street. Magazine Street is a long street that runs parallel to the Mississippi River and is filled with quirky and interesting shops, cafes, bars, and restaurants. The street took its name from an ammunition magazine located in the area during the 18th century. We walked about three kilometres along Magazine Street, stopping for a coffee along the way, before turning back up Washington Avenue towards St Charles Avenue, where we called for an Uber to take us to our next destination, the Backstreet Cultural Museum.

Our Uber driver picked us up just after 1:30 pm and we headed to the Backstreet Cultural Museum in Tremé. When we arrived at the museum, our Uber driver advised us to take care in the neighbourhood and not stray too far. It’s fair to say that it’s obvious we are not local to the area! On the basis of our driver’s advice, we negotiated for him to stay and wait for us and then take us on to our next stop. We went in to the museum and had a look around (which doesn’t take that long since it’s all in one very small room!). The museum’s collections include objects relating to the African American culture of New Orleans with an emphasis on jazz funerals, and Mardi Gras Indians. The museum contains many priceless artifacts of African-American culture in New Orleans, including elaborate, brightly colored suits worn by Mardi Gras Indians in previous years, and rare photos from the 1940s.

We exited the museum, hopped back into the car and headed for our next stop, Mardi Gras World, located at the Port of New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Mardi Gras World is the behind-the-scenes visit to Kern Studios, who have been building Mardi Gras floats since 1932. We watched an interesting movie on the history of the parade and Kern Studios, ate some New Orleans King Cake (a blend of cinnamon roll and coffee cake, decorated with yellow, green, and purple icing, which are the colours of Mardi Gras) and had a very interesting tour of the working studios.

When we exited Mardi Gras World later in the afternoon, the rain had set in. We called an Uber to take us to our next next destination, the National WWII Museum. The museum is located in New Orleans because New Orleans is home to the LCVP, or Higgins boat, the landing craft that brought US soldiers to shore in every major amphibious assault of World War II. The museum is quite spectacular and easily one of the most impressive museums we have been to anywhere in the world. To fully explore the museum would probably take a whole day so we had to move through it quite quickly. But we still enjoyed the exhibits and learned a lot of new things about the war.

We left the National WWII Museum with only one more planned activity for the day: dinner! We had a reservation at the Court of Two Sisters so we hopped into an Uber and headed back into the French Quarter. The Court of Two Sisters is in Royal Street, in a property with three centuries of fascinating history. We had a lovely meal and, once again, finished with Bananas Foster.

We have observed that Creole cooking is about preparing comfort food, not about fussy presentation. So even high-end restaurants here in New Orleans don’t seem to worry too much about presentation. But even though the food in the photos above looks pretty basic, it is packed with flavour (and with a lot of spices too!).

After a lovely meal, we walked down Royal Street, turned into Toulouse Street, and then joined the throng in Bourbon Street. Since it was a Friday night, the energy level was even higher than on the previous nights. We walked down Bourbon Street and crossed Canal Street to head back to our hotel.

We are now back in the hotel. We fly to Miami tomorrow afternoon and we’re undecided about what (if anything) we might do in the morning. We’ll just see how we feel tomorrow.