Carnival Cruise/New Orleans 2019: Day 8

Friday was our last full day of vacation and our last day in New Orleans. We woke up and got ready to explore more of the city that day. Since we were leaving New Orleans that afternoon, we packed up our luggage and checked out of our room, but we were able to leave our stuff with the front desk at the hotel and leave our car parked there as well, which was great.

Since we were up and ready to go before we were supposed to meet everyone in our group, we decided to walk just down the street to Café Beignet for a second round of beignets! When in Rome New Orleans. They were so good at Café Du Monde, we thought we'd try another restaurant that served them. They were amazing at Café Beignet as well, though I think I may have liked the ones at Café Du Monde just slightly better. However, I liked the little café setting of Café Beignet better for sure. We had beignets, coffee and hot cocoa and we LOVED it all!



When we were done at Café Beignet, we walked over to where we were meeting our group. We had decided to get tickets for the street car and take that over to Lafayette Cemetery Number 1.

So interesting that a tree was growing out of this grave.

We spent a long while in the cemetery exploring before we took the street car back to the French Quarter. We walked around and did some more shopping before having lunch at Oceana Grill. The food was SO good!! Jake and I shared our two entrees. He got the Blacked Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo and I got the Red Beans and Rice. Our friend Jim got two appetisers for us to try which were both amazing!! He got the Louisiana Crab Meat Cakes and Blackened/Fried Alligator. We were even able to trick the kids into trying the fried alligator. We just told them it was chicken nuggets and they both loved them! Ha! We did tell them what they actually ate and they couldn't believe how good it was for being alligator. I also had the La Boheme Crème Brulee for desert and it was excellent.

This cool door was right by our table at the Oceana Grill so I had to get a picture. ;-)

After lunch we did some more shopping before heading out of town at around 5:00 that evening.

We drove that night back to Jackson, MS to stay the night in the same hotel we stayed in on the way down. We ordered pizza in and just relaxed before going to bed. Saturday morning we left Jackson, MS and made the 8 hour drive the rest of the way back home to St. Louis. The rest of our group left New Orleans early Saturday morning and got back later that night. We left earlier so we could make it back for a trivia night at Jackson's school Saturday evening.

We had such a great time on the Cruise and in New Orleans!! If you'd like to read days 1-8 of our trip, you can click here to view them all. Thanks so much for following along!

Carnival Cruise/New Orleans 2019: Day 7

We had to be off the ship at around 8:30 Thursday morning, so after getting all of our luggage and going through Customs and all of that to get off the ship, we made our way to get our cars, and our first stop was down in the French Quarter.

We had never been to New Orleans, so I was excited to see it. The only downfall was it was around 35 degrees when we stepped off the ship and it didn't really warm up much that day. It was breezy and chilly which was not ideal for walking around the city outside, but we tried to make the best of it. We first stopped at Café Du Monde for some beignets and they were SO delicious!

After that, we walked over to Jackson Square to see the St. Louis Cathedral, which was really beautiful.

I had to get a picture of Jackson in Jackson Square. ;-)

After coming out of the St. Louis Cathedral, we walked over to the riverfront to see the Mississippi River from a different vantage point than what we're used to seeing it in St. Louis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was quite chilly over by the River and we were all freezing, so we decided to go find a place to eat lunch so we could be inside for a while. We ended up having a very yummy meal at the French Market Restaurant. I wasn't overly hungry since we had just eaten Beignets not that long before this, so I just got a cup of Jambalaya and it was SO good! I also tried some Fried Green Tomatoes that our friend Jim had gotten and we also tried Etouffee, which wasn't something I'd order but wasn't too bad and I'm glad I tried it. I'm not a very adventurous eater, but I do like to try new things when someone else orders it. Ha.

After a nice, long lunch, we headed back outside into the cold and made our way over to Bourbon Street. We went into many little shops along the way, and I loved seeing all the cool architecture. We didn't end up spending too much time on Bourbon Street because there was a lot of construction and many of the places on Bourbon Street weren't necessarily "kid friendly". There were also tons of Panhandlers, so we had to keep hold of the kids at all times there, which made it a little stressful.

Avery loved trying on all the masks at the different shops.

After a little while on Bourbon Street, we all decided to walk back to our cars and head to our hotel/rental house. Jake and I and our kids had booked a room at the Hotel Monteleone for the night since we were only staying one night in New Orleans. The rest of our group were staying two nights, so they all booked a rental house together, right outside of the city.

The Hotel Monteleone was gorgeous. Such a cool hotel.

Our room at the hotel.

The view from our room.

After getting a few things unpacked, we decided to check out the rest of the hotel. This is the view from the top floor where the roof-top pool is.

I wish I could have gotten a better picture of this sign on the roof, but was never able to see it from anywhere we were down in the city.

A little later that evening, we drove over to the rental house that everyone else was staying in and our friend Jim fixed us all his yummy stuffed pasta that he's made for us before when we've visited him in Phoenix. It was very good, as usual and we had a great rest of the evening together.

When we got back to our hotel that night, I took a picture of the city at night from our room. We were right down in the French Quarter, which was so cool. We actually fell asleep listening to a trumpet player playing outside that we could hear all the way up on the 11th floor. The Hotel Monteleone is on Royal Street, which is only one street over from Bourbon Street. Such a cool place to stay, I highly recommend it.

We had such a fun first day in New Orleans. I'll be wrapping up our trip posts tomorrow with our last day in New Orleans.