New Orleans Weekend

New Orleans is a great town that two years later is still recovering from Katrina. Well over half of the population as of yet has not returned, and it will be years until the recovery will be anywhere near complete.

We arrived in New Orleans on Saturday, without our luggage. This makes it the second time I lost my red Riccardo bag, the first time being when Southwest Airlines lost it when we flew in to PHL from Los Vegas. This time however, it was US Air in Philadelphia's mistake. After waiting in a line for almost half an hour, we took a taxi to LePavillion Hotel, checked into hour luxurious room, and hot footed it down to the French Quarter for some grub.
I am not going to go into detail about the food we ate, but will be blogging about the New Orleans food on The Grub Hound.
Restaurants we visited included:

Acme Oyster House

Bourbon House Restaurant

Mr.B's Bistro
LePavillion Crystal Room
Beignets at Cafe Du Monde

What we Did Besides Eat

• Walked around the French Quarter especially Bourbon Street.
• Checked out some art galleries.
• Did a tour of New Orleans with Cajun Encounters.
• Took the Free Ferry to Algiers.
• Lost money at Harrahs Casino.
• Shopped for souvenirs.
  
• Relaxed in our LePavillion Room.
• Took lots of pictures which can be seen in my New Orleans Picture set.
• Used LePavillions in room Wifi to write several short blog posts and check email.
  

I plan on doing a few more posts about our New Orleans vacation, but for now,
read the previous New Orleans post in addition to this one.

Sun Set on Lake Pontchartrain

Sun Set on Lake Pontchartrain
Originally uploaded by Emperor Anton

The highlight of our trip to New Orleans was the Cajun Encounters Katrina tour we took.
We cruised through New Orleans and saw the different types of architecture, visited the City of the Dead, stopped at the New Orleans Botanical Garden, then went through the part of New Orleans were the levy first gave out during Katrina. Passing through this area, we were led to Lake Pontchartrain, were this photo was taken.
We also were able to see several of the new Pumping Stations and one of the new gates which are designed to prevent the lake from flowing back into the city, which is what happened during Katrina.

The tour then went back through the garden district and ended up back at our hotel by about 7pm.
We highly recommend the tour, but suggest taking the earlier tour rather than the afternoon tour because of visibility towards the end of the tour, which nevertheless was very informative as well.

Check out our New Orleans Pics on Flickr.

VW Bus Bike

vw genius
Originally uploaded by Baby Skinz

I just saw this and had to post about it.
Lizzie has been a fan of the VW Bus for quite a long time and one day hopes to cruise around in one. I don't think this is what she has in mind though, since it doesn't have a sink...lol

Going to NOLA for the weekend!

Our house has been under construction for many, many months now, at least it seems as if it has. We went away to Canada two weeks ago at the request of the contractor so he could get in the house and resurface the hardwood floors. 99% of the entire project was to be completed by the time we returned from our trip.

Well it's now two weeks later and the floors still haven't been finished, the bathroom's not finished either AND we need to leave the house again. So we're making the best of the situation (any excuse to travel works for me!) and heading down to New Orleans, Louisiana!

We wanted to go to a place where we've never been, but we only have two nights and three days to take it all in. I went to NOLA about 20 years ago when I was in college, to visit a friend who attended Tulane University. It was a really quick trip and I only remember really loving New Orleans and thinking that I have to get back there some day. Well, 20 some years later and I'm going back! Unfortunately, this trip will be as brief as the first trip - but it's better than never going back. AND Adam has NEVER been there!

We're staying at Le Pavillion Hotel in the French Quarter. I have no idea what this hotel is like - I'd love to hear other people's opinion who've been there. We'll arrive on Saturday, November 3rd at noonish and fly home to Philly on Monday evening. Short and sweet.

I scheduled the trip on Last Minute Deals.com. I've never used that service before, but I looked around on other travel sites and I have to admit, being a last minute trip - their prices were fabulous! Hope the entire experience is positive!

Needless to say, I'm seriously excited about this trip and I'm sure Adam will have an abundance of photo opportunities!

See ya in NOLA!

Update: Here are the New Orleans trip posts.

• The first post I got to was Sun Set on Lake Pontchartrain.
• Here are the New Orleans Photos from the trip.