Anniversary in New Orleans

If you'll remember, John and I traveled to New Orleans in March to watch Baylor play win the Sweet Sixteen. We both agreed that given the opportunity, we'd love to back and see more of the lovely Crescent City.

So when we started talking about how we wanted to commemorate our first anniversary, NOLA popped into both of our heads. And so we hopped on a plane Thursday night and landed in the Big Easy, both of us ready for good memories, drinks, food and sights.

We first arrived at the historic (and haunted) Hotel Monteleone.

(Exterior)

(Lobby)

John mentioned we were celebrating our anniversary when he booked our room so we were upgraded to an executive sweet and greeted with champagne and chocolate covered strawberries.

We immediately went out and found ourselves a lovely spot to dine at the Green Goddess. John ate a truly Nawlins dish of crawfish, shrimp and snails over grits. I opted for a quinoa stuffed tomato with over corn maque choux. Delicious. Afterward we went to the Carousel Lounge, the bar located in hotel lobby for some after dinner drinks. (Yes, it's actually an old carousel and yes it still spins.)

We were up early Friday morning and headed to Cafe Du Monde for cafe au laits and beignets.

Shamefully, we ate the entire plate.

Following breakfast, we headed to the New Orleans School of Cooking. Our instructors, life long residents, taught us how to cook bread pudding, pralines, shrimp and artichoke soup and crawfish etouffee. And we of course got to eat it for our lunch!

 

This was definitely a highlight of the trip and we'd recommend anyone travelling to New Orleans in the future to make time for this.

After graduating from cooking school, we headed to the National WWII Museum and spent several hours there. We headed back to the hotel for a nap and shower before heading to our special dinner at Commander's Palace.

Y'all, we had the best food and drinks ever. I had a peach and blue cheese salad followed by soft shell crab and Creole cheesecake. John ordered gumbo then enjoyed a seafood special with crab, shrimp and fish and then finished it off with their famous bread pudding souffle.

Commander's Palace had very unique drink combinations. This was a basil and blueberry concoction. Very yummy. John stuck to sazeracs.

We then headed to Preservation Hall to listen to some New Orleans jazz music.

The music was incredible.

The next morning we lounged until lunch when we headed to Central Grocery, home of the first muffuletta.

We took our HUGE sandwich to the bank of the Mississippi and enjoyed watching the boats go by.

Afterward, we hopped on the street car and looked at the beautiful homes in the Garden District of New Orleans. We then stopped for a quick bite of ice cream from Creole Creamery.

Brown butter pecan ice cream cone.

Vanilla malt.

On our way back, we stopped at Acme Oyster Bar to try chargrilled oysters and split a poboy.

Turns out, I'm not an oyster person.

And then, as we were about to head to the airport, we discovered our flight was delayed. So we took a free guided audio tour of our hotel and then played rummy in the lobby.

New Orleans was absolutley fantastic and we're already to go back again. Maybe not in August when it's so stinkin' hot and humid though...