New Orleans 2015

This past week my family and I took our yearly vacation. This year we went to New Orleans, Louisiana. I didn’t want to have a ramble-ish blog post about it so I’ll just post all the pictures I took and talk a little about each one.

Day 1: Our 6 a.m. flight was worth it to see how beautiful the sky looked. We arrived in the city at around 10:30 and couldn’t check into our hotel until 4:00 p.m so we had lots of time to kill. We wanted to ride the street car so we wouldn’t have to walk in the hot sun but we missed the first one. Then we walked maybe ten blocks to the other street car, waiting thirty minuets without shade, only to find out that it isn’t running due to construction. So we hung our heads and headed back to the hotel to wait in their air conditioned lobby for our rooms to be ready.

Madame LaLaurie House. If you’re fans of American Horror Story Coven then you know the significance behind this house

Lots of coffee was needed for this day considering we were at the air port at 4 A.M

Day 2: There was a Starbucks about four or five blocks away from our hotel so my dad and I walked there around 7:3o a.m every morning to enjoy the weather before it got super hot out. We had brunch and then explored the city. We found an amazing dessert cafe full of wonderful treats. Had lots and lots of coffee. I also got my palm and tarot cards read by a really cool psychic. It was a neat experience. & lastly finished the day off envying almost every item American Apparel sells.

Aesthetically pleasing marble table.

Had brunch at A Court of Two Sisters. Amazing food and service!

Sucre A Sweet Boutique. Such a cute place filled with amazing desserts!

Macrons are hard to come by in Ohio so when we see some we have to get them. These were amazing by the way.

Sucre’s seasonal flavors. Watermelon and apple pie, how freaking cute!

Day 3: We began with coffee of course. Then did some touristy things like spend, not even joking, four hours in museums. I loved it though and really learned so much about the city. We stopped at Cafe Du Monde, famous for their chicory coffee and beignets. Both very very yummy.

Garage door from a Katrina rescue house. The X’s are used by FEMA, it’s their Urban Search and Rescue marking system. The 912 stands for the time and date the rescue team left the structure. The numbers on the left are the rescue team identifier. The red ink is what the victims wrote.

St. Louis Cathedral. Just as beautiful, if not more, on the inside.

Cafe Du Monde. The Original French Market Coffee Stand since 1862. New Orleans. Featuring their Beignets and Coffee Au Lait

The Cabildo- Louisiana State Museum. Celestial globe, 1863. Charles Delagrave.

Tommie Elton Mabry, Hurricane Katrina survivor used his apartment walls as a journal during Katrina.

Day 3: I had coffee with my dad again. After we finished our drinks, we decided to walk down Canal Street for a few blocks to see the casino and the palm trees lining the road. We rented a car this day (finally) because we were all pretty sick of walking so much. We went for dinner at Naked Pizza because my mother is gluten-free and they offered a GF pizza crust. My sister and I got a BBQ chicken pizza half with black beans, per her request not mine. I loved it, probably one of my favorite meals there! Later we walked down on Bourbon street, got completely drenched with NOLA’s summer rain, and walked through knee-deep puddles, because this is the “sunken-city” and one hour of rain floods the streets. We stopped in The Bayou Club to listen to authentic cajun music, also to dry off. Then my sister, mother, and I went to a drag queen show at Lucky Pierres, I was not disappointed! I had a blast and absolutely loved every drag queen there! Highly recommend going to see a drag show at least once in your life.

Day 4: The day I’d been dreading practically the whole vacation. Our main reason for going to NOLA was to scatter my grandmother’s ashes in the Mississippi River; we finally crossed that bridge Thursday. It was something that needed to be done for my grammy and for us. I felt we got a sense of closure and a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. We still began the day with coffee, although my father and I were a little more solemn. We drove over the river to where my dad and grammy used to live and got to see their old apartments. Half of the complex is still destroyed and hasn’t been repaired since the damage of Katrina. Seeing it destroyed was actually pretty sad, but still neat to see my dad’s history. After we scattered my grammy’s ashes we sort of chilled and relaxed the rest of the day. It was nice.

Day 5: Our last day began with coffee of course, but I didn’t remember to take a picture. I’m very disappointed in myself haha. Our flight left at 5:45 p.m so we had half of the day to still see parts of the city; I enjoyed that. We went to a super cute cafe that served brunch and we all had a delicious meal. My mom stepped in dog poop when we were getting back into the car afterwards and we laughed those laughs that causes your lower back to hurt and tears run down your face. We drove around the Garden District and looked at huge houses and saw the AHS Coven house. By that time, we had to return the rental car. We got to the airport super early and had to check our bags. My parents’ luggage was ten pounds over the limit so instead of paying the one-hundred dollar fee, we had to shift and move around stuff into each of our bags. We waited around the airport for a few and then boarded the plane for Dallas/Fort Worth. Got some coffee when we landed there and then literally boarded the plane at the very last second, not stressful at all. But to our surprise the plane was pretty empty so we had lots of space. Flying at night was pretty neat. The lights looked like stars which is a weird twist of perspective, because down on the ground, we looked like a star to some. The long dark flight left lots of time to think and to count my blessings. It’s weird how some things happen and they’re so hard to deal with. Like my grandmothers death, we never would have taken this trip if she hadn’t died. I can’t put her death anymore eloquently other than it sucks, it simply sucks, losing a grandparent. She was a strong woman and I miss her daily. She gave us this trip and we were able to see pieces of her past 928 miles away. Anyways, we landed safely and exhausted. This trip was amazing and I’m so thankful to have gotten to see this city.