Over Memorial Day weekend of 2023, I got to visit a historic city I've wanted to experience for years: New Orleans. There's quite a lot to see in this city and while I didn't do any kind of deep dive, I did get a good look at various sights in the French Quarter, the WWII Museum, and Magazine Street. That, and, a timeshare presentation.
This trip was rather hastily planned and came about due to some severe weather in the Lake Tahoe area, straddling the California/Nevada state line, in early March. This is what happened: I'd already booked a stay during March 12-15 in an IHG property in Nevada near Lake Tahoe, which I would get for free if I listened to a timeshare presentation. The way this worked was that I paid them $249 by credit card, and then they'd give me that amount back in cash after the presentation. Coincidentally the rental car I booked cost about that same amount. After the presentation I'd spend the rest of that day and the next day snowboarding at the ski resorts in the area, for which I would use the remaining two days on my three-day Epic Pass. The flights there and back were going to be free, booked with Southwest reward points.
But then an absolutely devastating winter storm tore through the Tahoe area. IHG actually called me on the evening before the day I was supposed to fly out, asking me if I wanted to cancel. First I said "not yet," but after looking at weather reports called them back and cancelled the hotel stay and the presentation. Then I cancelled the Southwest flights and the rental car.
Because I still had the next week off from work, I quickly booked three nights in a hotel in Gunnison, Colorado, drove up there the next day, and used my two Epic Pass days at Crested Butte. So that took care of my Epic Pass for the season, but I still was entitled to a "free" vacation with a timeshare presentation at an IHG resort.
IHG called me again later in March asking me where I wanted to spend this vacation. Looking through the list of locations I couldn't find a whole lot that stood out; several of their resort properties were in otherwise uninteresting places, like isolated corners of Massachusetts and Illinois, where there was nothing to do but hang around the resort, which seemed to be mostly geared toward families with kids. I was about to choose Williamsburg, Virginia, until I finished looking down the list and saw New Orleans. Now there was a place I'd wanted to visit for a long time!
Since I'd already burned up the leave days for this trip in March in Crested Butte, and I would have a four-day weekend for Memorial Day, I decided to book this trip for that weekend, even though there would be an extra fee to pay. Because this was happening on a holiday weekend, I would have to pay $58 instead of staying for free. That seemed reasonable; since I would be staying three nights in a rather lavish hotel, paying $58 for the whole thing was beyond a bargain.
Thursday, May 25, 2023
Just like with the original Tahoe plan, I would be flying for free on Southwest, redeeming reward points. The first flight was from Lubbock to Dallas Love Field, taking off at 7:40pm, and then the second from Dallas to New Orleans, landing at 11:40pm. That late at night, I had nothing to do except walk through the mostly-deserted airport terminal, past all the closed restaurants and shops, reclaim my baggage, and ride an Uber to my hotel.
My hotel was the Voco St. James Hotel on Magazine Street downtown. Now this was quite a luxurious hotel, definitely more upscale than the kinds of places I usually stay at. And it was only for the bargain price of $58--that's for the entire stay, not per night--thanks to the sales pitch I was going to subject myself to the next day.
Friday, May 26, 2023
Most hotels I stay at either have no breakfast at all, a "continental breakfast" which is all cereals, breads, and fruits, or a "hot breakfast" with all the continental stuff plus something cooked, like scrambled eggs, bacon, or sausage. If there's a breakfast in those hotels it's always self-serve buffet-style.
But here I was staying in more lavish accommodations. Voco St. James has a full-service restaurant that serves breakfast. What I got was an egg white and vegetable sandwich with mixed fruit. Definitely better than what you'll get at a Quality Inn! Although, of course, I had to actually pay for this, all of $17.62, because it's not complimentary like the breakfast in those cheaper hotels.
The timeshare presentation was going to be at 11:30am, so I didn't have time to do much that morning before then. I walked across Canal St. to get my first look at the French Quarter. But first, after crossing Canal, I got a good look at downtown...
St. Charles Avenue in downtown New Orleans, seen from across Canal.
Now we're in the French Quarter, looking down Bourbon St. at the intersection with Iberville.
The French Quarter is probably the most famous neighborhood of the whole city. Today, parts of it are extremely tourist-heavy, like most of Bourbon St. and the areas around and near Jackson Square.
I did some cursory Wikipedia browsing before my visit here, and learned a little bit of the history. During the years of French and Spanish colonial rule, what we now call the French Quarter was all there was to New Orleans. After Louisiana became a U.S. state, English-speaking Americans started moving in, but rather than move into the already-established city, they started building up an expansion just outside it, which became today's downtown. During the 1800s, Canal St. was a linguistic border, with people speaking English on one side and French on the other. Streets also have different names on opposite sides of Canal; Bourbon St. in the French Quarter becomes Carondelet St. in downtown and further west for example. Magazine St., where my hotel was, is the French Quarter's Decatur St.
There are signs like this all over the French Quarter, telling you the street's Spanish name from the era when Louisiana was under Spanish rule. Bourbon Street was Calle de Borbón, Royal Street was Calle Real, St. Ann Street was Calle de Santa Ana, and so on. After France lost the Seven Years' War (or "French and Indian War") in 1763, they would have to hand over all their American possessions over to Britain, but didn't want the British to have Louisiana, so they handed it to Spain in a secret last-minute deal. That era lasted forty years and ended when France, by then an empire ruled by Napoleon, conquered Spain in 1803. That same year, Napoleon sold the whole territory to the United States.
I didn't have a whole lot of time to do anything in the French Quarter. I just walked around the part of Bourbon St. that was close to Canal. Since I wanted some coffee, I stopped at Café Beignet near Bourbon & Bienville. Along with my cup of coffee, this was where I bought the first of many groceries to take home: coffee beans and some Slap Ya Mama and Tony Chachere's spice blends.
By this point, there wasn't anything else to do except walk to the Holiday Inn on Carondelet St. and go through the timeshare presentation. This was going to be a two-hour sales pitch and I wasn't completely sure what to expect, only that they were going to push really hard to get me to buy a piece of property I didn't want. I rode the elevator up the second floor wondering what I was getting myself into.
If you don't already know what timeshares are, big hotel conglomerates like IHG own resort hotels, like this one in downtown New Orleans, where people can buy, not rent, a suite in the hotel, only for certain times out of the year while other people who bought it stay there at different times. Seems like a neat idea on the surface, but timeshare agreements are notoriously near-impossible to get out of after you sign your name on one and make the purchase. For as long as I can remember, I've only heard timeshares talked about as if they were obvious scams.
Before my trip, John Oliver had recently made a Last Week Tonight episode about timeshares, which revealed, among other things, that because it's almost impossible to get out of a timeshare contract, this has given rise to a whole new industry of agencies meant to help you escape, many of which have turned out to be shady money pits themselves.
And so, "push really hard to get me to buy a piece of property I didn't want" was a pretty good description of the next two hours. I think the salesman knew from the beginning he wasn't going to get me to sign anything, since these timeshares are targeted mostly to families with kids and I have neither of those things. But he sure tried. The tour started with a short introductory video and a walk through the history of Holiday Inn Club Vacations. Then we went up to a model suite the salespeople use to show off to people like me. After that tour, it was back to the second floor, in the big room full of tables occupied by salespeople making their pitches, where we sat down at one table and he really started turning up the pressure, showing me this thick, weighty book with listings of all their properties around the world. He also spent a lot of time explaining this confusing-looking points system, which I didn't pay much attention to because I was never going to sign anything.
When two hours had finally passed, and I had spent the required time there, I finally told the agent that I had no intention of signing anything and would have liked my money back. Without any argument he directed me to a cashier standing by an exit door, down a hallway that I hadn't noticed before. This cashier handed me $249 in cash and then I took an elevator downstairs and left the building. That was that.
I'm not sure I'd do this again, sit through one of these sales pitches to get a free vacation. Yes, it was a great deal, but these sales agents are basically real estate agents trying to get us customers to buy property. Do they rely on suckers signing agreements to feed their own families? How much pressure are they under to make sales? When the customers are gone, is it like Glengarry Glen Ross back there?
Well, that was finally out of the way. Now I just wanted to eat and drink my way up and down the French Quarter. So I immediately walked across Canal St. and to Felix's Restaurant and Oyster Bar, near the intersection of Bourbon and Iberville. For lunch here, I got a bowl of jambalaya. The way they serve the jambalaya here, in its homeland, is a bit different than the microwaveable kind I've bought at grocery stores before. Real authentic jambalaya isn't quite so soupy as I expected; it's more like two sticky balls of rice, meat, and spices, and set in a bowl even though a plate would've worked too. With the jambalaya I had a Faubourg light lager, my first beer of the trip. This was a good one.
Next up was a historic location I'd heard about and always wanted to visit: the Napoleon House, a restaurant and bar at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres. Printed on the back of the menu is some of the history of the place. Construction started in 1797 and it was originally the mayor's house. It acquired the name "Napoleon House" because of a daring plot to rescue the exiled French emperor Napoleon from his prison on the island of St. Helena; his would-be rescuers were going to bring him to New Orleans where he would live in this house. Napoleon died in 1821 before this plot could be implemented.
The bar in the Napoleon House where I was sitting for a few drinks. The place is also a restaurant serving Creole staples, but having just eaten lunch I wasn't hungry anymore.
I had one beer here, Urban South Paradise Park lager. I also had a shot of Sazerac, a locally-distilled brand of rye whiskey. Not bad, but to me not noticeably different from any other kind of whiskey I have to throw back as quickly as possible.
After the Napoleon House I walked to Jackson Square. This is a small park, the size of one of the Quarter's city blocks, which is a gathering space for painters, performance artists, and loads of tourists like me.
At Jackson Square you'll find a lot of performance artists like this one, who was doing some impressive knife juggling.
A long view of Jackson Square as seen from Decatur Street. In the center is an equestrian statue of the park's namesake Andrew Jackson, who is best remembered for being President from 1829 to 1837, but was honored here for defending the city from the British during the War of 1812's Battle of New Orleans in 1815. In the background you see St. Louis Cathedral...
This is the historic St. Louis Cathedral. Looking at Wikipedia, it seems this is the third such cathedral that was built on this site, built in 1789 to replace the previous cathedral which had burned in the catastrophic fire that swept the city the year before. And this one has itself been remodeled extensively so many times in the 1800s so that today it looks almost nothing like its original 1789 appearance. I wanted to go inside, but it wasn't open at the moment.
Across Decatur St. from Jackson Square, between Decatur and the Mississippi River, you'll find a historic coffee house, the Café du Monde. So of course I had to stop for coffee here at least once. Even though you can find their coffee grounds at just about any grocery store in the country, I also had to buy a couple bricks of grounds. And not only that, they threw in three complimentary beignets, which are deep-fried pastries with powdered sugar. I only ate one of them there, and saved the other two for later.
Away from Jackson Square, up at Bourbon and St. Philip, one place that was on my list to visit was Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, which is actually a bar these days. It's one of the oldest buildings in the city; I later learned that it's one of very few buildings that survived both New Orleans fires, 1788 and 1792, and thus is a rare example of the original architectural style which once dominated the French Quarter. The majority of buildings in the Quarter were built during the period of Spanish rule, after the fires had destroyed what was there before, and thus have a more Spanish style.
So, next time I'll be sure to actually take a picture of it.
I only hung around the Blacksmith Shop for one beer, an Abita Amber; I wanted to move on and check out as many places as possible.
By now it was early evening and Bourbon St. was getting more and more crowded with tourists, just like the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas, with which I'm quite familiar.
Looking southwest down Bourbon St. near the intersection with Conti.
Most of these bars I stopped at, I didn't stay for much more than one or two drinks, in order to move on and find even more places to stop. Next was Fat Catz at Bourbon & St. Louis where I just had a Nola Amber.
A couple blocks from Fat Catz I found another historical location I wanted to visit:
They do have absinthe here, which you can drink in shots, but it turns out that none of their cocktails are made with real absinthe. I had their house specialty, an Absinthe House Frappe, which is made with two different anise-flavored absinthe substitutes, Herbsaint and anisette.
I found a great place to eat dinner: Mahony's Po-Boys and Seafood, at Iberville and Dauphine. This was my first time eating another New Orleans staple, a po'boy. This is a kind of sandwich served on a length of toasted French baguette bread. I had a half-size fried catfish filet po'boy and it was "dressed" with lettuce, tomato, pickle, and mayo. Delicious! And even though it was only a "half" it was still pretty big.
But, if you're going to New Orleans now, don't look for Mahony's in the French Quarter, because at some point in the nine months between the trip and my writing this blog, it closed down permanently. There's still one other location on Magazine St. in the Touro neighborhood, a few miles from the Quarter, and it has the same menu, so I'll recommend that one.
Next stop was Le Boozé, in the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon between Conti and Bienville. I had an Urban South Who Dat golden ale. It was OK, but not great.
And finally, I finished off the night at the Bourbon O Bar where I discovered a locally famous cocktail, the Grasshopper. It's made with crème de menthe and crème de cacao. I'd heard of it before but never actually drank one until having one here. I liked it so much I had two of them.
Saturday, May 27, 2023
They really serve some great breakfast at the Voco St. James. This time I had Greek yogurt and granola with honey, bananas, blueberries, and strawberries. After that, before leaving the hotel for the day, I finished off the two beignets left over from yesterday's visit to the Café du Monde.
I didn't have too much of a plan for Saturday, only to spend it away from the French Quarter to see more of the city. I knew there was a World War II museum downtown and I wanted to check that out. On the way I stopped at Café Bon Ami, near Perdido & Carondelet, for coffee.
The National WWII Museum takes up a large space next to Highway 90, between Magazine and Camp Streets. Even though I am a bit of a history buff, that particular war hasn't interested me much, probably because for my whole life I've been living in its shadow; high school and college history classes spent a lot of time on it, I've seen I don't know how many movies released over the last 70 years set during the war, and of course all the endless History Channel and Discovery Channel shows that my dad used to watch. Even so, I thought this museum would still be worthwhile, and it was.
The museum is made of several pavilions that surround a courtyard. The entrance, where you start your experience, is in the Louisiana Memorial Pavilion.
This lobby is the first thing you see. It looks like an old train station, like those from which American soldiers, sailors, and Marines left their hometowns to whichever seaport they would sail out of during the war.
After you get your ticket, there's a whole Train Car Experience to go through in the train station, but I skipped this so I could get to the next showing of the "4D" film, Beyond All Boundaries. This was playing every hour in the next pavilion over from the lobby, the Solomon Victory Theater. The "4D" seems to refer to how immersive it is, with its wide, curved, panoramic screen, CGI animations on that screen, and various props like a whole airplane lowered and raised into the theater at certain points. Not to be missed if you're visiting the museum.
After the film, I stopped for lunch at one of the museum's restaurants, the American Sector. This was the more upscale of their restaurants, and I had a Victory Garden Salad with salmon.
I didn't stop at the next pavilion, the Hall of Democracy, but rather moved on to the next one after that, the US Freedom Pavilion, which has this huge exhibition.
Six restored planes that actually flew in WWII.
On the second floor of the US Freedom Pavilion, uniforms from every American armed service.
There's an exit to the courtyard from the pavilion...
What you see here is the Liberation Pavilion. There's a lot more to see there, but I didn't go in, and instead went to the one after it, the last pavilion, Campaigns of Courage.
Campaigns of Courage is probably where I spent the most time at the museum, outside of the 4D film. It's divided into two halls, one devoted to the war in Europe and the other to the Pacific.
From the European hall in Campaigns of Courage, a Howitzer.
I had to take a picture of this old picture; it's the German city of Cologne, after having been bombed in 1945. Over 74 years later I visited Cologne, which is fully rebuilt and then some, where I got to check out that cathedral and run a marathon through the city.
This is from the hall dedicated to the Pacific war. Since that part of the war was mostly fought at sea, you start out in what's supposed to look like a battleship's bridge.
This display case includes a captured Japanese uniform, sword, and revolver.
Part of the exhibits about the China-Burma-India theater.
So to wrap that all up, the National WWII Museum was quite impressive. Even though it was all about a era I don't have too much interest in--and maybe I should be more interested, considering how world-changing it was--I will return the next time I'm in New Orleans, and stay longer and be sure I don't miss anything.
I didn't have anything else on my list of places to go, so the rest of the day was going to be a restaurant and brewery tour. This was also going to be my first time using New Orleans' public transit system. I went to the Garden District, southwest of downtown, by way of first a bus and then a streetcar. New Orleans, like San Francisco, runs a network of old-fashioned streetcars, running on rails in the streets and powered by overhead cables, that look like they were made in the 1940s or earlier.
In the Garden District I walked six blocks south from Magazine Street to Tchoupitoulas Street. You may be unsure how to pronounce that. So many place names in this city, and indeed the whole state, have names like this, that originated with the French, and whose original pronunciations have been mangled by 200 years of English speakers saying them to the point where their current "official" pronunciations don't make any sense in either language. All that is to explain: I asked someone at my next stop how to say "Tchoupitoulas," and he told me it's "Choppa Toolus."
That's a phenomenon I'm familiar with, having once lived in San Antonio, Texas in Bexar ("Bear") County, where plenty of Spanish and German names have gotten the same treatment.
That next stop was the NOLA Brewery at Eighth and Tchoupitoulas. Now here's a great place to stop if you're in the neighborhood and are into craft beer. And even if you can't, their products are sold in bars all over the city. First I had a pint of lager, simply called NOLA Lager, and then a bock called Bockturnal.
Back up on Magazine St., I stopped at a grocery store called Breaux Mart where I bought quite a lot of coffee to take home.
By then it was getting into the late afternoon so I wanted to find places to eat and drink. There's plenty of opportunities for both on this stretch of Magazine through this neighborhood.
Magazine St. runs for several miles southwest of the French Quarter, serving as a thoroughfare for every neighborhood it passes through. I was never sure exactly what neighborhood I was in as I walked up and down this street, but Google Maps says this photo, at Magazine and Eighth, is in the 11th Ward. The places where I stopped were here and in adjoining Touro.
First, I found a coffee shop called Vintage where I got a Mocha, and even more coffee beans to take home; I was seriously stocking up.
Next was my dinner stop: Joey K's, at Magazine and Seventh. If you're looking for some of that authentic, spicy creole food, you can't do much better than this. I had some delicious jambalaya for dinner. And also...
Faubourg lager served in this goblet. This is the same kind of glass I've seen called a "schooner" in certain other parts of the country.
After dinner I walked several blocks west down Magazine into Touro. CR Coffee Shop was a nice place, in an old house, to stop for my last coffee of the day. Then after that, I walked even further west on Magazine, as far west as I was going to go on this trip, past Jefferson Ave. into Audubon, where I found St. Joe's bar. It's in an old house, like many businesses on this street, but inside it's elaborately decorated to look like an old church.
St. Joe's has a great beer selection. I started with an Abita Purple Haze, the beer that first got me into craft beer when I discovered it at San Antonio's Flying Saucer. Purple Haze has a slight raspberry tinge to it, strong enough to be really noticeable, but slight enough that it still tastes like beer. For my second and last beer, I had something that wasn't local at all, but a Belgian Trappist ale: Chimay Red.
That was enough for one day. After finishing the Chimay I rode bus 11 east on Magazine all the way back to the hotel.
Sunday, May 28, 2023
One more delicious breakfast at the Voco St. James before checking out: overnight oats with granola, whipped cream, and berries. When I checked out of the place, they of course let me store my luggage there while I looked around the city more; my flight wasn't leaving until 5pm.
Voco St. James is one of the nicest hotels I've stayed at in a while. I don't know how much it really costs, since I was getting that massive discount as a reward for subjecting myself to the timeshare presentation, but it's probably way out of my budget. Next time I visit New Orleans, and there will be a next time, I'll be staying somewhere cheaper and much less luxurious.
So it was now late Sunday morning, and I was walking back into the French Quarter looking for more stuff to do. Looking for coffee, I found CC's Coffee House at St. Philip and Royal.
Next I found my way to the French Market and spent a lot more time here than I did on Friday. The French Market is this huge open-air market where local vendors sell food, art, jewelry, clothing, and various other things. It was the food I was looking for. I found some Creole seasonings I wanted to take home, one for grilled fish and the other for red beans. And speaking of red beans, I also got some dry red beans. I'd long wanted to learn how to prepare dry beans for eating but had been putting it off, and now with this purchase, I was finally going to do it.
(It's really easy, just soak the beans overnight and then cook for 45 minutes on the stove.)
From another vendor I also got a ceramic coaster with a picture of one of those Spanish street name signs printed on it:
I could have gotten "Calle de Borbón" but I felt like that was too obvious a souvenir choice. Orleans St. is the street which runs northwest from St. Louis Cathedral and intersects Bourbon St. right in the center of the French Quarter.
What to do now...there was a neighborhood next to the French Quarter on the other side of Esplanade Ave. called Faubourg Marigny that I thought was worth a look. A historical marker at Washington Square park, in the middle of the neighborhood, says that it was originally a suburb, established in 1806, and was predominantly Creole (Louisianans of French descent) by the 1820s. Today it's known for its main street, Frenchmen St., lined with the expected assortment of bars and live music. At this point late Sunday morning I didn't really feel like bar hopping, even though many of those places were open, and there wasn't any live music going on, so I just walked up and down a few blocks and headed back to the French Quarter. I'll have to return, though, on my next visit.
Frenchmen Street in Faubourg Marigny
May as well get some more coffee now. Envie Espresso Bar & Café was at the corner of Decatur and Barracks, extremely close to the French Market. This place not only serves great coffee but has a great atmosphere as well. Not only did I get my cup of coffee but also bought even more grounds to take home.
Just how much coffee grounds and beans did I buy in New Orleans? I think it may have been eight bags. I didn't finish off the last one until well into the fall of that year.
I went back to the French Market for lunch, since there were several food stands there. From one I got a tasty bowl of gumbo.
After lunch it was time to start making my way to the airport. I picked up my luggage from the hotel and then boarded a streetcar on Canal St. which I rode out of the French Quarter to the greenway along Norman C. Francis Parkway. There was one more drink stop I wanted to make which had been on my list of places to visit: Bayou Beer Garden, a short walk along the parkway near its intersection with Conti.
Bayou Beer Garden has a really great beer selection. I started with something local, Parish Canebrake wheat ale. They also had a lot of my favorites from across the pond, which is why I also had a Paulaner hefeweizen and a Chimay Blue. Finally, I finished with another Louisiana brew, Gnarly Barley Shaker Aid Pilsner.
Leaving the Bayou Beer Garden, there was now only one place I could go, the airport. To get there I had to call an Uber. I'd wanted to use transit but that was just too impractical, since the airport is way out in a suburb, Kenner, and waiting for and riding a bus would have taken too long. And so Uber is what I went with, and the driver got me to the airport early enough.
I flew back to Lubbock by a different route than Thursday night; instead of Dallas, the layover was in Austin.
Looking back, I could've done that trip a lot better, but it was a great first look at New Orleans. There's still a lot more to see in the French Quarter, like the Voodoo museum, there's live music to be experienced in Faubourg Marigny, more eating, drinking, and shopping to be found on Magazine St., and whole neighborhoods that I didn't even step into. I'll certainly be back.
