Monday, December 14, 2009

Mom's birthday in New Orleans

Well here I am in New Orleans. It's my last night here with mom and I thought I'd blog about the trip so far. I decided to take her here for a landmark birthday she had last month since she had never been here and I knew she would love it. The weather has been spotty at best but we've managed to have a great time.

We arrived on Saturday around lunch time and headed into the city. We're staying at a small hotel in the quarter called the Hotel St. Marie. It's fine but I wouldn't recommend it if luxury is what you're going for.

Once we dumped our stuff, we made our way out to Bourbon St. for Mom's first taste of NOLA. We headed to the Gumbo Shop on the suggestion of my cousin Laura. Mom had the seafood gumbo and I had the reb beans and rice. SO good!!! Mom wasn't too impressed with her gumbo because it wasn't as chunky as she thought it would be but the food was great and drinks were flowing so we were off to a good start.

Unfortunately, mother nature decided to intervene in our trip and it poured on our first night. We made our way back from one end of the quarter to our hotel and managed to get completely drenched. We ordered a pizza from a shop around the corner and were sorely disappointed when it arrived 30 minutes late, smooshed and completely wrong. Oh well, we devoured it anyway and survived. After being awake since 5 am we were glad to be in the comfort of our hotel room out of the rain.

We took our time getting up on Sunday morning. I made my way down to the hotel breakfast nook and made off with two croissant, 2 coffees and 2 apples. It was a bit of a balancing act getting them back to the room! After devouring our breakfast we got cleaned up and headed toward Canal St. We wandered around, got mom's cell phone sorted out and bought me a zoom lens for my Canon.

One of our goals for Sunday was to find a good jazz brunch and we did just that. After a minor detour to a restaurant that no longer exists (Cobalt) we made our way to the Palace Cafe. Here we treated ourselves to mimosas, pork eggs benedict and bananas foster beignets. It was out of control good. My body went into a mimosa/sugar coma though and I had to take a nap. Thankfully we didn't have anywhere to be until 3:45.

TBC

No comments: