From Rock'n'Roll to Creole Sept 17: Day 10 New Orleans : WW2 Museum, Cocktails and Gumbo

[WileyCoyote]

Yesterday is Downtown Nashville and arriving in New Orleans

OMG this hotel bed was super comfy.

We had a really long lie in and a leisurely start to the day .

So leisurely that it was gone 10 before we set off , not realising that it was a] already scorching hot and that b] breakfast service was almost over.

I got out our cubes for the stay here and took another couple of pics of the room

Did I mention it was hot already?.

WOW, Super hot, took us by surprise.

And not realising that the planned breakfast destination was going to be a complete yomp , we set off taking in the incredible atmosphere on the way to Canal Street.

Our hotel

Yep, more wine , less crime, I could vote for that …..

Love the streets around the city

Courthouse

The poshest PD ever ..

We stopped into a couple of stores.

We loved this one . It had some great coffee but being a family site I cant post the photo of the name here. Suffice to say , it encouraged you to wake up !

The names of these sauces ! Slap Ya Mama and Bayou Butt Burner

We arrived on Canal Street which was much more like a “normal” big city street scene with high rise, glass fronts .

We did a quick stop at the Voodoo Mart but it was really overpriced tourist tat

We had a been going for 30 mins and already lost half our body weight in perspiration.

EWWWWWW

I had failed to take account of how far along Magazine Street we would need to go.

We passed a really busy café and Andy suggested we stop for breakfast – I was a bit (very) dogged about getting to the restaurant on the “plan” – so he agreed to carry on. He was right, we should have stopped …

After another half an hour and the realisation there was probably the same walk again ahead of us to reach the planned Diner , we found ourselves going past at the WWII museum .

Our plan had been to come here after breakfast.

It made no sense to keep going in the insane heat but unfortunately there was not a single flipping café in sight .

I had to admit total plan failure and opt for anything as by now we were really thirsty ( did I mention it was HOT). This was way hotter than Florida !

We spent a bit of time looking at the memorial bricks and then crossed over to the Museum

We had missed breakfast service by about 15 minutes so had to go for an early lunch . We chose the Jeri Nim Soda Shop purely as it’s the first café at the Museum !

It was ok, nothing special but not bad.

I had the bacon jam burger

Andy had a Chilli hot dog

With two iced waters.

It certainly tided us over while we went around the incredible museum.

We paid our $27 each entrance fee and entered the main hangar with the larger exhibits.

It was staffed by veterans and Andy spent time chatting to a few of them.

One chap had been to Manchester so was asking all about England and where we lived .

Its very humbling speaking to the vets, they were all such gracious and charming people.

To progress further into the museum you board a virtual train and are given a dog tag.

The tag relates to someone who features in the museum and you tap the tag as you go along to find out about their story. It’s a pretty neat idea.

The special event exhibit was Louisiana at War

We then spent quite a bit of time in the section on Merchant Navy.

3 of my Gran’s brothers had been merchant seamen on the Russian convoys in the War so I have always found it an interesting topic.
.
Even more so to read that there had been a big
dispute about compensation as Merchant Seamen and their families were not recognised for armed forces payouts but this had recently been changed.

A handbook on how to abandon ship, imagine that !

The main part of the museum is brilliantly themed to immerse you in the different “ theatres”.

The Pacific war was set as if you were on an aircraft carrier or on one of the islands.
They had lots of video clips running which were all interesting to watch

You started on the Ship

And then the Islands

We found the person on Andys dog tag

And then we reached the end of the American and Pacific section , which is very sobering.

From there we headed downstairs to the war in Europe

Amazing details, think of people knitting dog tag covers to stop them clinking

Then into a mock up air raid shelter

And around a number of famous European battlegrounds

It was a completely absorbing experience.

Lots to see and really interesting way in how it had been laid out.
We had been completely immersed in it. It was definitely getting busy as we left. We exited through one of the larger cafes and it was packed out.

We finished up by looking at some of the outside exhibits.