Friday, January 27, 2012

New Orleans Trip - Day Two

After a busy first day in New Orleans, we turned off the cell phone alarms and slept in late. SUCH a luxury! I can't even remember the last time I didn't have an alarm go off in the morning!

By the time we got up and got ready to go, it was time for lunch! We decided to buy day passes for the cable cars on Saturday, so we rode a cable car over to the French Market!


The cable cars run back and forth on their tracks without turning around, so there are two driver's seats, one at the front and one at the back. The passenger seats have nifty backs that slide back and forth to face either way! 

Now we're going forward...

...and now we're going backwards!!

For lunch, we went to Central Grocery, a place that claims to have the "original muffuletta!" 


It's a cute little store with a deli counter in the back that's been around for over 100 years. 




We ordered a full muffuletta and split it, and it was really yummy!




You can't go to New Orleans without getting some beignets, so we walked over to Cafe du Monde for dessert! 





We got an order of beignets and a cafe au lait... look how delicious they look!



We shook off most of the powdered sugar (there was so much!!), and they were so good! Next, we walked over to catch the cable car to take us to the National World War II Museum!

Goodbye, Cafe du Monde!

Pretty cathedral in New Orleans

The World War II Museum was really great. We could've spent all day in there. This is President Roosevelt's speech about Pearl Harbor:


It was originally written to say "a date which will live in world history," but he scratched it out and changed "world history" to "infamy." So interesting!


Here's a model of some Army barracks:


I wish I would've taken more photos... there were tanks and cannons and planes, along with lots of old uniforms and weapons and stuff. They had a particularly great exhibit on D-Day... I learned so much! We also saw a 45-minute film produced by Tom Hanks about WWII. The theater had those seats that vibrate, and there was smoke and mist and stuff, so it was pretty cool. It was like being at Disney World, but informative and educational! 

We stayed at the museum until they closed, then headed back to the hotel to get ready for a fancy night out. Our first stop was the Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone. Hotel Monteleone also has a travel deal through Jeff's company, but we ended up picking the Ritz Carlton instead. I had looked at the Monteleone's website though and saw this awesome bar that they have, so we decided to stop by for pre-dinner drinks. It's designed like a carousel, with seats that slowly revolve around the bar - so fun! 


It was a lovely place to sit and chill. Apparently authors like Hemmingway and Faulkner used to come here to hang out! So cool.


We had 8:30 dinner reservations at Mr. B's bistro, which was right across the street. 


They had delicious bread, and we split a bottle of wine. Jeff ordered their "specialty," the barbecue shrimp. People all over the restaurant were wearing "bibs" and eating those shrimp! I had honey ginger pork tenderloin, and we both really enjoyed our food!


Barbecue Shrimp!

We split the bread pudding for dessert... delicious!


Can you tell there's a lot of good food in New Orleans? I'd say about 90% of the "tourist attractions" are food/drink related. It was all so good! We left Mr. B's around 10:00 and had a lovely cable car ride back to the hotel. Up next, our last day in NoLa! 

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