New Orleans - Day 1

Last week Brian got to go on a trip to Louisiana and Texas to test cell phone coverage in certain cities for his work. Lucky for him and me, I got to tag along. We had SO much fun! I really didn't want to come back home. 

On May 15th we flew into the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans Louisiana at 10:00 am. It was so cool to see the coast of Louisiana and all the trees and swamp land below us from the plane. We had to wait at the airport until noon to get our car from the guy testing on the route before us. We were tired from our early flight and although I had slept on the plane, Brian didn't. So Brian took a nap and I stayed awake reading and watching is phone for a call from the guy. Finally, a little after 12:00, we met the guy and got in the car and we were off. 

We had planned out all of our stops before hand in each city and collected addresses and made an itinerary for ourselves so that we wouldn't have to bother with maps and figuring out where to go. We got to drive a brand new Ford Tauraus, and dang it was a nice car! It took a little bit to figure out the GPS, but we managed to make it work and we went to our first testing spot. We haven't driven a car this much for a year and a half, and Brian was a little nervous at first. He really wasn't used to driving because we don't have a car in NYC. So things were a little shaky, and there may have been some side-seat driving from me :) but we survived.

At each stop we had to wait for 15 minutes while the phones ran their testing programs. In each city we had to make ten stops. This was nice because we really got to explore the entire city, but we didn't get to really explore any one spot. We just kind of got a taste of each place. One of the spots we stopped at was called Longue Vue House and Gardens. It is an old estate with a giant house and gardens created in the late 1800's. It was located off of Bamboo Road, which was a tiny little paved lane winding through tall bushes of bamboo on one side and large gated estates on the other. We drove down the lane for Longue Vue and realized that you had to pay before you could park there, so we flipped around in the parking lot, snapped a picture and drove back out to the road.

So now you've seen as much of the place as we have! We were able to park along the side of Bamboo Road for our 15 minute test period. It was so gorgeous with the lush green bamboo, and the air smelled wonderfully fresh. While we were sitting there, we saw a blue jay. I had never seen one before, and it was such a pretty bright blue bird.

Our next stop was City Park and this was one of my most favorite stops in New Orleans. The park was filled with giant trees covered in long lengths of moss. It was the coolest thing, and I have never seen anything like it before. I left Brian in the car and went wondering through the park. I took a ton of pictures of the trees, because they were so neat.

Brian eventually came and joined be and we walked around a little more to stretch our legs and take a break from sitting. There was also palm trees of various shapes and sizes, and a small river running through the park. There were lots of ducks by the edge of the water and it was fun watching them.

I realized at this point that I had taken pictures mostly of plants since we had gotten there. Whoops! I tried to branch out and capture more after that.

Before leaving the park, Brian realized that one of the phones had gone dead and hadn't been testing. It hadn't been properly connected that morning and we didn't catch it till later in the day. We had all of the phones set up in the back seat and plugged in their chargers, which were plugged into power squids, which were plugged into an inverter, which was plugged into the cigarette lighter of the car. All this so the phones wouldn't go dead throughout the day. 

Well, one of the phones had gone dead and we stopped and waited for it to recharge, but it just wasn't charging. So we found a burger king and stopped for a cheap lunch. While I was ordering food, Brian had the phone plugged into the wall outlet at the place. By the time we had left, the phone was only at 16%, but we were running out of time to get the testing done so we pushed forward.

Trying to deal with the problem child!

We stopped at the Audubon Zoo (again you've now seen as much of it as we have). We had a smart phone on loan so that we could tweet a picture/comment at each of our testing spots. So at this stop I walked around taking pictures with our camera plus one with the phone. There were some little girls playing in the flower beds nearby and when I walked past them they asked me if I was taking pictures of everything. I said yes and then they said that they were touching all of the flowers and that I should go take a picture of the flowers over there. They were cute.

We also saw St. Stephen's Church. I absolutely loved the architecture in New Orleans. It was all southern and a lot of the buildings had columns around their front doors and wrought iron balconies. In some neighborhoods all of the houses were painted bright neon colors. 

We also noticed strings of beads everywhere! They were hanging from lampposts, street signs, telephone wires and in the branches of trees. I tried to get a good picture of them but we were always moving so it was hard. If you enlarge the photo below you can see the bead hanging in the tree. Some trees had more beads in them than branches and leaves!

In one of our stops in a shopping center parking lot, we found The Tooth Bus! Dental care on the go? Hahahaha. We really laughed at that one.

They had a trolley system running in the city near the area around the French Quarter.

New Orleans (pronounced Nawlins by the natives) is definitely a colorful town from the people to the buildings to the food.

The problem phone soon went dead again, and was just being a pain. Brian was so frustrated. We only had one stop left to make, which was in Algiers, just across the Mississippi River. So we plugged the address into the GPS and went for it. However, the GPS led us to the ferry crossing, which did not transport cars. By this time we were both stressed and ready to be done for the day. So we skipped the last stop, because the one phone wasn't working anyway and headed for the hotel. On the way we crossed Bourbon Street.

We stayed at the Marriott which only had valet parking which was expensive (good thing this was a business trip) and we checked in and got everything (phones and luggage) up to our room. We walked over to the French quarter which was about nine blocks from the hotel. The tallest buildings in the city were all right there, and they were not nearly as impressive as New York buildings. I think New York has skewed our perception of big cities.

More palm trees!

We loved the buildings in the French Quarter.

We had dinner at K Paul's Louisiana Kitchen and let me just say that it was the most amazing dinner I have ever eaten! Oh my goodness was it delicious. We were seated at the bar so that we didn't have to wait three hours to get in. The bartender and people sitting next to us were very friendly and it was kind of a community dinner that we had. We started off with a cup full of gumbo, which I loved! It had chicken, sausage, rice and all kinds of vegetables in it and it was spicy. It was so delicious though, and ever since we tried it I've been craving more. They brought us a basket of rolls that included jalepeno rolls that were not spicy at all after eating the gumbo! They also had cornbread muffins, molasses muffins and dinner rolls. We split a pear, blue cheese, pecan salad with a lemony vinaigrette which was amazing. I ordered a steak and potatoes (still an Idaho girl) and Brian ordered rabbit with a side of shrimp pasta. My steak was heavenly and just melted in my mouth along with the creamiest mashed potatoes I have ever had. Brian loved his meal as well. I tried the rabbit which was good, but I don't know how to explain its taste. It was chicken-like but not chicken if that makes sense. His pasta was also delicious.

After dinner, we wandered around the shops looking for a Christmas ornament. We saw lots of aligator heads...

....and Mardi Gras masks.

We wandered down Bourbon street for a few blocks and it was pretty creepy so we didn't stay long. We did enjoying hearing all of the live music as we walked down the street. We found this church near Jackson Square. While we were taking pictures of it a group of people walked by and the guy fell down and they all started laughing. That's the first fall down drunk I've ever seen.

We tried to find a voodoo shop but really didn't see any. There was one that we went into but it looked just like all the other stores except it had a small room with a table containing a crystal ball on the back. There were lots of people sitting at small tables along the sides of the streets offering to tell your fortune or read your future with Tarot cards.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at Drago's in the lobby of the Hilton. Brian's Dad had told us that we needed to try their Oysters. So we ordered a half dozen of their charbroiled , but I was still so full from dinner that I didn't have any. Brian, after declaring earlier that K. Paul's was the most amazing food he had ever eaten, hastily retracted this statement and remarked that the Oysters were the best thing he has ever tasted.

When we got back to the hotel room, Brian had to finish off some works stuff for the day. He needed to set up the phones so that they would relay all of their collected data from the tests that day back to the servers at PCMag. However, the phones were having trouble connecting to the hotel's wifi and weren't working. So we finally just went to bed after Brian sent off an email to work letting them know what was going on.

I felt bad because Brian was so frustrated and exhausted. The day was good overall and we got to see some amazing things and taste some amazing food, so that helped!