Day 146 - New Orleans

We had a perfect day in New Orleans. The morning was cool, but not cold. The walk to the bus stop was a little longer as the gate we thought we could use was only Monday to Friday. However, at this gate we found a very nice grocery store. (This is important to the story later.) We caught the bus and got off near Riverwalk, a mall of sorts. We walked through it and had coffee and beignets at a branch of the Café de Monde. We walked down to the French Quarter after that and wandered around for a while. This was followed by a jazz brunch at the Court of the Two Sisters, a restaurant we quite enjoy. Then we walked down to the river and took a river cruise for part of the afternoon. It was just warm enough that the breeze from the river was cooling.

Okay, one warning. Never let a bartender named Bayou Billy pick a drink for you. We both had a Hurricane to start with, an old New Orleans special. I went back later for another drink but he was out of grenadine. The margaritas weren’t quite frozen yet so I just asked for a suggestion. He filled a 20 or 24-oz glass with ice and poured Malibu rum to a point where I should have stopped him. Then some pineapple and cranberry juices were added. All in all it was a great sail.

We knew we didn’t want dinner at 6pm so we took the bus back to the port gate, well a few streets north. This gave us a chance to walk through a beautiful neighbourhood on the way back to the grocery store. We bought the makings of a nice cold dinner and headed back into the port. When we were just through the gate a very nice gentleman offered to give us a lift back to the ship. It turns out that he was the night superintendent for our ship. We suspect that the woman at the gate told him she had just let us through. Not only did he save us a bit of a walk but he got us through that secondary gate we had a problem with last time! We even got direct to gangplank service before he went off to park. It was a perfect end to a perfect day. Since I have wireless access from the ship I will upload today’s picture before we sail.

Then tomorrow… we pack!