A NOLA Anniversary - Part 1

Shaun and I celebrated our first year of marital bliss with a 4-day trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. It was so much fun! We planned our trip solely around the food we wanted to eat, and thankfully the oil spill didn't have any effect on our plans to eat lots of fresh, local seafood! In between meals, we took some down time and went to see some of what the Big Easy had to offer.

We stayed at the Wyndham Whitney Historic Hotel, a bank building originally built in 1870 that Wyndham has converted into a hotel. It had a really neat atmosphere, with the original teller's counter still behind the concierge's desk and a private dining room, formerly known as the bank's vault. The picture below is of Shaun next to the vault door.
When we drove into town, we decided to walk around a little before dinner.

We passed by Harrah's Casino, which happened to be a block from our hotel. We used it once to walk straight through to get to another street. It's air conditioning offered a reprieve from the heat during our walk. Other than that, no gambling for us.

We went through the Riverwalk, a mall next to the Mississippi River with some fun shops, and bought a souvenir Christmas ornament to commemorate our anniversary trip.

This is the Creole Queen, a riverboat that offers jazzy dinner cruises.

After our mini sightseeing stroll, we felt it was time to go to dinner at Acme Oyster House, a New Orleans staple since 1910. We waited in line out in the street for about 30 minutes to get seated, but we made friends with an older, sweet Canadian couple in line behind us and the conversation made time pass quicker. We were seated at the bar and enjoyed some raw oysters while we waited for our yummy po'boys -- Shaun had an oyster po'boy with jambalaya and I had a catfish po'boy with red beans and rice. Mmm!!It would have been a true shame to be in Louisiana and not order an Abita Amber beer. Abita Springs is a town real near Mandeville, where I grew up, and they have a brewery there that my family would eat lunch at occasionally. And Abita Amber is one of the few beers I can say that I truly enjoy, so when in NOLA...

An Amber with her Amber!
(The lady at the bar looked at me funny when we took this picture. We think it might have been because she didn't card me and thought I was taking a picture of an underage drinking "conquest" or something. Ends up you don't get carded much at all in the Quarter...)

After dinner, we walked up Bourbon Street for a little ways. It was just as you would expect, so we didn't spend much time there at all, only long enough to hear the luring sound of live jazz music playing. We plopped ourselves down at the New Orleans Musical Legends Park (which is really nothing more than a courtyard off Bourbon) and listened for a couple songs before deciding to walk back to our hotel.

Rather than walk the same route back to the Whitney, we took a scenic route by way of Woldenberg Park. During our moonlit stroll along the Mississippi, we saw a small crowd gathered around some floodlights. Figuring it must be one of the city's many street performers, we decided to follow the crowd to see the show. As we got closer, I whispered to Shaun, "Umm, I think that's Anderson Cooper."

And it was!

He was taping a live segment about the oil spill's effect on New Orleans. We stayed long enough to watch a little of it and take some not-so-subtle photos of him before getting to our room to turn on CNN!

And there you have it, folks -- Day 1!