Day 28 - New Orleans, Louisiana all day

Day 28 of our National Tour found the Happy Wanderers in the much celebrated city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Wow! There's so much going on in this quintessential southern city that you just don't know what to let your eyes focus on first.

First of all, let me just say that you really shouldn't come to New Orleans if you have just a few hours to spend. Even if you have just a few days, you're going to run out of time way before you run out of sights and sounds and smells to appreciate.

Concetta and I had decided that we would devote a whole day to the city, but we knew even before we arrived that one day would be woefully insufficient to do all the things we wanted to do. Still, though it would have been nice to linger, we simply must not stay several days or a week in EVERY place that we fall in love with. If we did, we'd not get home until the frost was on the pumpkin back in Nevada.

So, since it was to be a single day, we had to get organized. And the way to do that was to consult the camp hosts at our New Orleans KOA. That was a wise move. They not only had a handle on where we should go and what we should do, they provided a shuttle to take us into the city so we could do those things. In addition, the camp hosts made reservations and/or sold us tickets for some of the things we wanted to do.

The best suggestion they had was to buy tickets on the red London-style, open top buses (photo top left) that allowed you to hop on and hop off at a variety of stops around their continuous route. This allowed us to, for instance, visit the WWII museum that was extremely well done (see photo of WWII scrap drive at right), as well as walk the garden district and then reappear again to grab another bus. Speaking of the garden district, the tour company even provided a guide for the garden district several times a day if he/she had takers at the garden district stop.

The camp hosts were also able to sell us tickets for dinner and a ride on the stern-wheeler, Natchez (photo bottom right), which took us on a three hour cruise on the Mississippi at dusk and we got to enjoy the harbor lights while listening to a Dixieland jazz band on the foredeck.

In between our scheduled events, Concetta and I hoofed it around New Orleans just taking in the shops and shooting photos of a variety of interesting subjects. At noon we had lunch at John Besh's Stage Door Canteen where Yours Truly had a delicious "crab cake sandwich" and homemade chips that definitely made a positive impression. In other words, YUM!

We talked about remaining another day once we had hailed a cab and been delivered back to our RV. It would have been nice, but would we have been satisfied with just one more day? I think not. No, we'll just have to come back someday and spend a week. Of course, that's what we said about Istanbul and we haven't made it back there yet. I suggest if you're visiting, it would probably be best to rent a B&B located fairly close to downtown so you can either walk or taxi easily to most places. It was about a thirty minute drive to and from our RV park.

Anyway, in closing I'd have to say that New Orleans hasn't been our favorite place on the vacation, though we did like the experience of having beignets and coffee at the Cafe du Monde as well as the couple of hours we spent at the World War II museum (we focused on the D-Day experience since the museum is so huge). The riverboat ride was fun. We met some interesting folks on the voyage and the Dixieland band was truly excellent. Our walk through the Garden District was probably my favorite thing we did because I'm just a fanatic about vintage architecture. I would have liked to have seen the Civil War Museum, but that will have to wait for another day.

And what about the quirky people and avant-garde lifestyles you ask? Well, we did see some. My personal favorite was the guy who, for a price, would write poetry for you. He had just pulled up a chair on the sidewalk and "hung out his poetry writing shingle." I didn't see any customers as we walked by, but who knows? Maybe you can make a living doing poetry plein aire.