So, despite being warned by several people that we were staying in the ghetto and to definitely not go in to the Piggly Wiggly, we had a fun week in New Orleans. Everyone was so nice and hospitable and the tournament took great care of us. We stayed at a state park which was just a few miles from the course and only about 20 minutes from downtown.Monday after finishing our drive from Hilton Head and getting settled we went to the course with Danny just to scope things out and get all the info on the weeks activities. While there we grabbed an incredible lunch at the clubhouse(always a good sign of a great tournament). That night we had a gourmet dinner of Taco Bell (I realize the sacrilege of eating taco bell while in New Orleans but we were out running errands until dinner time and we needed something fast)
Tuesday the boys and I ventured into downtown and went with some friends to the aquarium located right on the Mississippi River. It was really fun just getting to see the city with all of it's rich history. The aquarium was also pretty cool and the highlight according to Jack was definitely the "white alligator". The tournament offered transportation to anywhere so we took advantage of it and saved ourselves the stress of parking and trying to navigate our way through a city completely overrun with one-way streets.
That night we had a little family BBQ and even made some homemade ice cream...mmm we've got the summer bug.
Wednesday I took the boys to childcare for a few hours while I attended a luncheon at the Roosevelt Hotel(one of the oldest, most historic hotels in the city). We had a cooking demonstration by John Besh (I hadn't heard of him but apparently he's pretty well known from the food network and other TV shows.) Anyways, he made us this incredible, authentic New Orleans lunch and taught us a few tricks of the trade (OK let's be honest I don't make anything that has more than about 6 ingredients let alone something with all sorts of crazy herbs and spices I've never heard of, so most of that stuff went right over my head but I sure enjoyed eating it:) Afterwards we got to participate in a charity event packing backpacks of food for kids. OK here's my shameless plug. The organization is called Blessings in a Backpack. There are thousands of kids in this country being fed Monday through Friday by the government but have nothing to eat on the weekend so this organization goes into schools in lower income areas on Fridays and fills these kids' backpacks with food that they can prepare themselves so that they know they have something to eat over the weekend. Really cool organization!! Look it up on blessingsinabackpack.org.
Wednesday night we went out to eat at Draggos restaurant with some friends and I tried some char grilled clams. Despite not being much of a seafood girl, they weren't too bad if you could get past the texture:)
To be honest on Thursday and Friday the boys and I played it pretty low key. We all seemed to have a little bit of a cold and so we just let Danny take the car and we hung out at home. The pictures to the left show some of our biggest thrills. Both days we rode bike/scooter to the playground at the state park to get us out of the house and expend a little energy. We found a little slope at the playground that Jack then proceeded to cruise down, circle around, then climb back up repeatedly. He was barely even phased when he took a tumble, drawing blood on both knees, and replied after only a few tears, "it's ok, I'm tough" and rode right back up to the top of the hill. Several of our other adventures involve in some way, the two crib mattresses that we recently bought for the boys to sleep on . We realized after several nights of not sleeping that the mattresses were maybe bought a bit prematurely but when Walmart wouldn't take them back we decided that they served many more purposes than just for sleeping and have become a permanent fixture in the front windshield of our bus.
Thursday and Friday while we were "extremely busy" at home Danny was grinding it out at the golf course while we were following on the computer. I think I may get more nervous waiting for that darn computer to refresh than actually being at the course. At least there I can see what's going on. However we missed the cut and so on Friday night we decided to hit the town once again with the Putnams. This time we went to Acme Oyster House which is located in the French Quarters just a half a block from Bourbon Street. The tournament had given us each a gift card for way more than we could possibly spend but that didn't stop us from trying:) I got some gumbo, and a poe boy (sandwich of sorts) but the hit of the night was the crab sandwich our friend ordered that was literally a whole crab just deep fried. It really looked like a crab had just rolled around in some batter and then jumped into a deep friar. So funny!! Sorry I'm talking so much about the food but it wouldn't be an accurate account of New Orleans without it. After dinner we considered for a brief second walking down just a block of Bourbon Street so we could say we did it but having beer spilled on me while leaving the restauraunt made us feel that our trip was complete without it. We did venture into some other areas of the city that night though. For those not familiar with New Orleans, the Garden District is the upscale posh part of the city filled with blocks and blocks of classic turn of the century mansions (last century:)). This sounded like a great idea until I accidentally told Danny the wrong street to turn onto and we found ourselves in the ghetto of New Orleans at dusk with our two sleeping boys in the back seat. That's one of the crazy things about it is the city is such a patchwork place. You have multi million dollar mansions two blocks from the hood. So only fearing for our lives for a few minutes we got back on track and did get to explore the Garden District a bit. So beautiful and again, so fun to be in such a historic place!!
In general my impression of New Orleans was good. Like any big city it has it's dirtier, run down places but it also has some very fun, old beautiful features as well. Add all that to some good ol' southern hospitality and some pretty amazing food and New Orleans turned out to be an exciting stop on our crazy adventures.
