Why New Orleans?

From October 30th to November 5th of 2020, my boyfriend and I went on a lovely week long vacation to New Orleans, LA. Although a few things were a bit different due to COVID, we still enjoyed ourselves and made the most of our time there. This post will outline the activities and things we did during our 6 day trip!

The original plan was to depart from the port of New Orleans on November 1st for a 7 day cruise in the Caribbean! We’d return on November 8th and then head back to Philly. However, my boyfriend and I booked a flight on October 30th to have a couple of days to explore New Orleans.

Ultimately, this was a little early birthday present to myself. In addition, two other friends were supposed to go with us on this cruise. Due to the pandemic, I cancelled the cruise and my two other friends couldn’t go with us to Louisiana. Since we weren’t going on the cruise, we decided to shorten the stay to save some money and return home a little earlier than before. So, I decided to still go with my boyfriend and have a grand time!

You’ll see that I may sometimes refer to New Orleans as NOLA in this post. NOLA is another name for New Orleans; it’s the acronym for the city and the state. NO is New Orleans and LA is the abbreviation for the state of Louisiana. Put them together and you have NOLA!

Prior to going on this trip I did some research on things to do in New Orleans. I looked up a bunch of paranormal investigation tours since I love the topic! I also googled some museums and places to visit in the area. Of course, I took to Twitter about my trip where one of my followers gave me some awesome suggestions about places to see and eat at while I was visiting. My boyfriend and I ate at one of the suggested restaurants and we both enjoyed the atmosphere and meals!

Friday, October 30th:

We had a very early flight in the morning, around 7:30am as our departure time from Philly, with a layover in Atlanta, GA. Once we actually got to New Orleans from Atlanta it was about 1 or 2pm. My boyfriend and I were both pretty tired from waking up early and flying. So, we decided not to do too much wandering around on our first day there. We stayed at the Residence Inn in the French Quarter/Business District. It was a lovely hotel room with a beautiful view of the city!

Dinner at the Creole House

Around 5pm we got dinner at the Creole House on Canal St. Canal St. is one of the main streets in New Orleans. There’s a variety of stores, cafes, restaurants, and so much more along the road. Lots of hustle and bustle with beautiful palm trees that line the city streets. Of course, you can’t walk down here without seeing a trolley car passing your way!

The food at the Creole House was pretty good. We had some Cajun style meals, I had a mimosa with my dinner, and we said we’d come back another time to try their breakfast menu. With that, we left the restaurant and walked up Canal St. and down St. Charles for a little bit. St. Charles was the street our hotel was located on so we figured we’d walk down it for a bit to see some of the city.

Saturday, October 31st:

The night before we were googling for some good places to go to for breakfast the next day. One of those places was Daisy Dukes which was conveniently located right next to our hotel! We both enjoyed the food, and as you’ll soon read, we returned to that same place a few other times throughout our trip. My boyfriend particularly loved this place as he’s the one who primarily suggested we go there almost everyday for breakfast.

WWII Museum

One of the museums that came across in my research was the WWII museum. Now, I’m a huge nerd and love learning about history and WWII. The tickets were about $25 each and you had to buy them in advance because of COVID. One of the best things about the location of the museum was that it’s about a 10-15 minute walk from Daisy Dukes! Myself and my boyfriend love to walk so we decided to take a walk down the streets to the museum!

Unfortunately, the museum didn’t allow us to film inside so I couldn’t get any footage. However, I did take a few pictures of the material that was on display. It’s a pretty cool museum that I, and I’m sure my boyfriend, enjoyed a lot! There’s so many things to see and read about that you literally need a whole day dedicated to walking around this museum. I mean it! We got to the museum around 11am and didn’t leave until after 4pm, and that was only the American buildings on the war. There were other buildings dedicated to European contributions to the war, the Japanese, and much more!

Dinner at Magazine Pizza

Afterwards, we  were both very hungry so we walked to this little pizza place called Magazine pizza. It was literally a 3 minute walk at best from the museum. There are a variety of different specialty pizzas so there’s one you’re bound to love! From there, we walked up magazine street until we got to Poydras St, then went up that street until we got to our hotel. One of the things I love about New Orleans is that almost everything is within walking distance!

Sunday, November 1st:

We decided for breakfast to go to the Street Car Cafe which was also located next to our hotel. Clearly we figured we’d have breakfast close to the hotel since most of our days would be filled with walking around. From there, we spend the better half of the day walking around the famous parts of New Orleans.

Exploring New Orleans

That’s right, we walked down Bourbon St. and the French Quarter. I absolutely loved seeing the cute little side streets, the amazing architecture, and lively people walking down the street. It was quite a lovely walk. Afterwards, we walked down towards the water where we stumbled upon a mini Holocaust Memorial at the Woldenberg Riverfront park. We explored the area for a bit before making our way towards the Outlet Collection at Riverwalk.

Of course, no trip of mine would be complete unless I took some time to shop! My boyfriend bought me a lovely crossbody bag from coach as a present, it was so sweet! We proceeded to walk through the mall. I bought a mini card holder from Kate Spade, a souvenir for myself and my mom at a souvenir shop. Lunch was eaten soon after and we ate outside the mall. You could see the lovely views of the river, steamboats, and the deck area.

The walk back from the outlet area to the hotel wasn’t bad but after eating lunch each step made us want to take a nap. It was about a 15 minute walk, give or take 5 minutes, and we took different blocks to get back to the hotel. I tell you, walking around is such an amazing way of exploring the location you’re at and all the different things you see along the way! It’s the best!

Not so good Dinner

For dinner, after some googling once again, we decided on trying some BBQ from this place called Central City BBQ. Once it was delivered, we ate the food and weren’t as pleased. I had the brisket chili cup, buffalo wings, and the Mac n Cheese. My boyfriend has BBQ (he wanted brisket but they ran out) and ribs with beans and bread.

My boyfriend is from the south and knows some good BBQ when he eats it. He wasn’t the biggest fan of the BBQ from this place and neither was I. It wasn’t horrible but I certainly wouldn’t eat from there again. The overall taste was a 4 out of 10 for me and my boyfriend said a 3 out of 10 for him.

Monday, November 2nd

This was the day we decided to go back to the Creole House for breakfast. I had bottomless mimosas (3 to be precise) with grits and Gouda, eggs, bacon, and multigrain toast. Chris (my boyfriend) had an omelette with fish in it. The food was good but not as good as their dinner meals.

Audubon Aquarium

Yet again, we walked down towards the water front to go to the Audubon Aquarium. We arrived around 11am and spend a couple of hours there. We were a little disappointed because the aquarium wasn’t that big, and many exhibits weren’t open because of COVID, and the price for the tickets was a bit expensive. Nonetheless, it was an experience and the inside of the aquarium was pretty neat.

After the aquarium, we spent the next few hours in our hotel room just relaxing and chilling. I took this time to document the events of the morning for this blog post. We took this break because in the evening we had a tour. Popeyes was our dinner that night, and from Canal St. we walked up St. Peter’s street to get to the New Orleans haunted history tour. I love the whole genre of haunted history/paranormal stuff so I had to get in on a few of these tours while I was down there!

Haunted History Tour

The New Orleans haunted history tour was a 2 hour walking tour where we walked around the blocks of the city, listened to the numerous paranormal and haunted history of places, and took in the nightlife of NOLA. The best part about this tour was the break we took half way through the tour. We were taken to this little bar (I don’t remember the name so I’m sorry) and got a few drinks before continuing our walk.

I absolutely adored our tour guide whose name is Christine. She was funny, dramatic, and very knowledgeable on the supernatural aspects of New Orleans. The information provided by her is somewhat questionable, but I believe this type of tour played up to the paranormal stuff instead of the historically accurate details.

Tuesday, November 3rd

It was a sad day, in the beginning at least, because the St. Louis cemetery tour I had booked was canceled. I never found out the true reason why, probably because of COVID and the whole cemetery being closed in general, but the email said the operator canceled the activity. I checked other availability for the tour and there weren’t any open spots until December 2020 or January 2021!

Unexpected Swamp Tour

But that was alright, so I just booked the New Orleans Swamp Tour Boat Adventure. It offers hotel pickup and drop off which was lovely! They told us the window of when the van would pick us up. They pick everyone up 2 hours before the tour starts so make sure you devote a good portion of your day to this tour.

The tour was 2 hours long and our captain was pretty cool. He grew up near the swamps and were familiar with the waters. He even allowed us to hold a baby alligator! It was so much fun as we spotted a few alligators in the water and on land plus a few birds. We both really enjoyed it.

To finish off the night, we went back to Magazine Pizza for dinner. I honestly appreciate the bus driver for dropping us off at this pizzeria instead of our hotel as it saved us a walk back towards the pizza place. With bellies full of pizza, we walked back to our hotel room to call it a night.

Wednesday, November 4th

The morning of the 4th we spent half of breakfast booking tickets for the Audubon Zoo and figuring out how to get there. Up until this point, we had walked everywhere. But we found out that the zoo would have been a 2 hour walk from the breakfast place we were at! That’s quite a walk and we thought it’d be best to get an Uber. This was one of the few times we actually used an Uber besides getting ones to and from the airport.

Audubon Zoo

After the 30 minute ride to the zoo, we spent a few hours walking around the zoo. It was a pretty big zoo, to me at least, and we enjoyed seeing not only the animals but the beautiful mini bodies of water with birds around them. There’s even an area where you can walk in and have different types of birds roaming freely and it was such an experience! I enjoyed seeing birds roaming around with no worry or care in the world.

Dinner at Irene’s

With the zoo being checked off on my list of places to visit, we went back to our hotel room to figure out what to eat for dinner. I remembered a Twitter follower recommending a couple of places to eat so I looked at her suggestions, looked at the restaurant menus, and compared the distance of the places to the room and our tour that evening. Ultimately, we decided to go with Irene’s because it was about a 12 minute walk from our hotel room. Plus, it was a 5 minute walk from where we had to meet up for our evening tour.

We reserved a table there, I ordered the best champagne I’ve ever tasted, and had a lovely dinner. I tried something that was out of my normal preference and for the most part I enjoyed it. I just couldn’t get over the thought of what was in my meal, but when I tried to look past it the food was pretty good! In addition to the atmosphere, it was a nice dinner with my love.

Killers and Thrillers Tour

When we got to the Killers and Thrillers tour we walked around the streets of New Orleans learning about the different murders and killers from the past to the present. I love anything about crime, I even have degrees in criminology and criminal justice, and this tour really excited me! Overall, the tour was an hour and a half and it was more educational than our haunted history tour.

The tour guide, Michael, is a history professor from the New Orleans University. I enjoyed this tour particularly because it was more informative with heavy emphasis on historical accuracy as opposed to the other tour. Since my boyfriend and I have academic backgrounds, the scholarly view points and discussions from the professor was appreciated.

Thursday, November 5th

Thursday was the day to pack up our bags and leave New Orleans. It was bitter sweet as we’d really enjoyed our time in NOLA but we wanted to go home to Pennsylvania. We caught an Uber around noon to the airport after eating breakfast. Our flight departed at 3:01pm and by 6:30ish pm we were back in Philadelphia.

New Orleans was on my bucket list of places to visit and I’m so glad I was still able to go during this pandemic. But boy were our feet sore from all the walking we did! That’s alright, it was good exercise and we don’t get to walk around as much since the area we live in requires some sort of vehicle to get around to places.

Don’t worry, there will be more posts on New Orleans! So, be on the look out for future posts!

Check out these other posts! My Time In Orlando, My Time at Myrtle Beach, My Time In London