Bayous to Beaches. Oct 2019: Day 4 New Orleans. Art, Jazz, Food and Drink. The perfect day.

[WileyCoyote]

Yesterday is here

As a reminder, we are now into the non Florida leg of this trip. We will return to the sunshine state in 9 days time.

Friday 4 October

Its my birthday!

Plans for the day ahead ...

I opened a few cards that I had brought from home and started the day with the leftover cake from yesterday - it was still very yummy.

We had a lazy morning - I organised the cases ready for our departure tomorrow and checked out the last few details of the road trip we were taking.

Poor Andy was suffering from a sore throat and looked like he was coming down with a full on cold.

Around 11 we headed out to Walgreens to get him some meds and we popped in to the Hard Rock to take a wedding wishes pic for Dibber goodevans.

Bourbon Street was still very quiet and for the very first time in our trips here the city was distinctly aromatic.

Not all the street rubbish had been collected yet and in the searing heat it was frankly stinky.

We made our way back to Bourbon Street - we did pop in to one of the voodoo stores but it was a no photos place.

We also passed what used to be the Old Coffee Pot

where we had breakfast on our trip in March 2018.

That was before the Gordon Ramsay programme after which it closed down ( side of mice with your toast sir ) .

Its now re opened as part of the Café Beignet chain. Its one of NOLA’s oldest establishments so nice to see its back up and running.

Our destination was next door at Pat O Brien’s.

Firstly because I wanted a Hurricane to start the birthday festivities

Secondly so that we could take my Dad on a final journey.

He passed away in January this year and two of his favourite places on earth were New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

I had brought a small amount of his ashes with us to scatter.

We sat in the same spot where we have a photo of him with a hurricane cocktail and raised a toast. It was sad and happy at the same time.

From there we headed to lunch at the Court of Two Sisters.

It’s a beautiful setting out in the courtyard and we had booked for slightly earlier so that we could hear more of the jazz while we were eating.

Having had a hurricane already, I decided to stick with rum based cocktails for the remainder of the day - error !

Lunch was booked for 1230 . Not as busy as last time when we arrived at 2.

Andy had a bottle of Malbec and I had a Zombie. Far too strong. and couldn’t really manage much of it - what was I thinking, 5 different rum types I deffo should have had the martini at the top.

Buffet choices were as good as the previous visit. You don’t see many people taking food pics here so Andy told me people were looking at me taking these. Not that I was bothered after that Zombie juice

I do feel the desserts are a disappointment as they look like something that could have come out of Costco rather than an in house made.

Not that there is anything at all wrong with Costco cakes, they are lovely, I was just hoping for something a bit more homestyle .
They are a bit average after the amazing starters and mains.

I made the error of having a biscuit with the starter which filled me up

I managed a couple of plates of starters and main courses, the jambalaya and duck being the most delicious.

Andy fared much better than I did and had the rib roast

I did feel full and attempted the king Cake (a Mardi Gras tradition) with ice cream. It was incredibly sweet.

We had a delightful server called Tamika who really made the afternoon so nice.
It was as perfect as our last visit with the sunshine, the birds in the trees and the mellow jazz in the background. It is very lovely.

It’s $32 per head, the wine was $32 for the bottle and with my $9 cocktail and tax the bill was $116.


We waddled out just before the lunch service closed at 3pm.
A serious afternoon nap was required

We both felt overfull and a bit sick really after all that food so it was nice to sit in bed and watch tv for a bit.
After a while Andy decided he wanted to pop out to see if we could pick up another of the Stroll paintings - we had seen two the last couple of days.

He was gone for ages and when he came back said that he had got chatting to Danny, had some wine and had ended up buying them both … but they would need shipping home as they had already been stretched on the frame.

But no problem as that would be sorted.

Whats that they say, buy in haste, repent at leisure.

The internet is amazing at letting you spend your money really quickly … one bank transfer later and we were the owners of two new pieces of art.

Yeah that’s all going to go smoothly isn’t it.
Longer running saga than the Archers. Stay tuned for daily updates

It was about 7pm now so we headed back to Maison Bourbon.

Yes that is two Chewbacca’s passing by.

I did have to pinch myself as to whether I was still zombie cocktail hallucinating or not.

The band here are very good - energetic old school jazz.

We enjoyed it and I was also very pleased to see that they had by some Back to the Future wizardry managed to send us back to 1998

By the time we got back out Bourbon street was rammed.

There was a Miranda Lambert concert on that night and the Saints were at home over the upcoming weekend so the place was bursting.

It was a bit too chaotic.

My photos seem to tell me we had a final stop in Bourbon Heat

but I didn’t make any notes so it must have been just a quick stop before heading back to chill out in the Bourbon O bar.

I know we didn’t have any more drinks as we wanted to be away relatively early tomorrow and neither of us wanted to be “delicate” with a long day of driving ahead.

So it was good night N’awlins and see you next time.

Tomorrow is HERE

Today's cocktail tally: 2 (I do feel the zombie qualifies as about 4 myself)
Holiday tally so far : 10