travels, races, and other musings

Our feet were seriously tired come Sunday and but we decided to go to the aquarium. I have been to several aquariums and I worked for a short time for the Dallas Zoo and Aquarium, but this was the coolest one I have ever been to. We spent much of the morning there before going to one of my favorite restaurants, Angeli on Decatur, for lunch. After that, we wandered around the quarter a bit more and sat for awhile in Jackson Square enjoying the gardens. We then decided to take a buggy ride. The driver/tour guide on the buggy was seriously funny and we learned even more about the French Quarter on our 20 minute mule-driven carriage tour. After that, we went back to the hotel and rested for a bit before heading out for our last meal in New Orleans. We decided to have some gumbo and have an early birthday celebration (because we were going to be in the car all day on Monday - my birthday). I had a piece of chocolate cheesecake and Roger had bread pudding before returning to our hotel and

On Saturday we woke up at a reasonable hour, ate breakfast and hopped onto the St. Charles streetcar for the Garden District. We had found an interesting looking tour online of Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 and the Garden District. At 11 AM we met up for the tour. Our tour guide was really quite good. He wasn't campy or dry and he didn't sound like he was reciting a memorized script (in fact, I don't think he was at all). We spent about an hour in the cemetery before heading out to look at the Garden District houses. Of course he pointed out Anne Rice's lavender mansion and Trent Reznor's reclusive-looking (but lovely) house. After that we found a place for lunch on Magazine and then took the streetcar back to the quarter where we shopped until dinner. After dinner we headed out for our second tour of the day, a Haunted History tour. There were waaay too many people on our tour and the tour guide was a little too cheesy and sounded scripted. When asked a question, howe

A couple months back we decided that we seriously needed a vacation and that a four day weekend trip to New Orleans would suffice. Not having a lot of money, we decided to drive there and we booked a really good rate on a hotel online. We got up early and headed out at about 8:30 AM. The drive is generally about 8 hours, but we made terrible time. There was intermittent rain the whole way there. In addition, we drove through numerous construction sites on I-10 once we hit Louisiana. By the time we made it to Baton Rouge at 5 PM (we really should have already been in New Orleans), it was Friday rush hour and an accident to boot and we sat for an hour in Baton Rouge traffic. We finally made it to new Orleans a little after 7. We found our hotel (Queen and Crescent - four blocks outside the quarter on Camp), checked in, and then wandered out to find something to eat. Our hotel was pretty close to the Aquarium of the Americas since we were on the Canal side of the French Quarter and we