A NOLA Anniversary - Part 2

Saturday morning started the way most every tourist's day starts in New Orleans -- with some delicious beignets and chicory coffee at Cafe du Monde on Decatur Street. A beignet (french for "doughnut") is a square of fried dough crowned with a mound of powdered sugar. So good! I ordered a frozen cafe au lait... Shaun opted for a chocolate milk instead. :)

The line to get into Cafe du Monde was about 30 minutes long again, but we watched street performers across the street and the carriage drivers advertising their tours.

Shaun liked the beignets!

A lot.

Breakfast of champions!

After breakfast we wandered the French Quarter and just admired how pretty it all was. The wrought iron balconies and tucked away courtyards are just a tiny piece of the city's charm.

The courtyards are hidden away behind the buildings, but between units you can sometimes get a passing glance at one of these "secret gardens."

Vestiges of Mardi Gras parades past

The French Market is a large farmer's market in the French Quarter with all sorts of produce, trinkets, and deals. Our purchase? A bottle of Miss Dior Cherie perfume for a steal of $30. When we got back to the hotel we found out why. Same bottle, totally different smell. I think we were duped. Bummer.

Saint Louis Cathedral -- This mini basilica is an iconic image of the French Quarter. We were lucky enough to get inside before the two weddings they were holding that day. Pshh, we thought, the Academy's chapel is doing twice that today!

This band, The Smoking Time Jazz Club, set up shop in the center of Royal Street and performed like 5 different songs. We sat and watched for quite a while and enjoyed the couple in the right side of the picture who ballroom danced to each selection. We enjoyed it so much that we bought a copy of their CD. A much better purchase than the Dior...

We stopped into shops frequently to enjoy their AC. This mask store was one of our favorites.

Like my very own Cyrano de Bergerac! :)

Spray painted performers everywhere.

And then came the streetcar fiasco...

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!

Well hello there!

Okay, so I decided to start a blog. I felt it was time. After all, with family and friends so far away, it was the only considerate thing to do to allow you all to be privy to the minute details of our daily lives, right? Either way, with no job this summer and lots of free time, I was excited to take on a new project and found inspiration in others' blogs.

Welcome to the world of the O'Bryants! We have been married for just over a year now and have been loving married life! I plan to catch you all up on our adventures over the past year (from our wedding to Europe to Disney World to New Orleans and everything inbetween) and hope to make this entertaining enough for your perusal on an occasional lazy Saturday morning.

Since being married, I have also discovered my newest hobby -- cooking! Though I live for culinary challenges I find myself in (like making an Easter ham stretch throughout the entire month of April... more on that later), I find comfort and joy in making a weeknight meal for my husband and me. So I hope to also include you in my kitchen journeys, sharing recipes and photos of some of my favorite creations. Should you ever decide to try one of them, I would love to hear how it went and if you liked it too.

Most importantly, my goal for this blog is to keep a two-way street running between us. We hope to hear back from you all and read comments you leave. Even better yet, if you read a post and find yourself passionately opinionated or just dying to know more, give us a phone call or dial us up on skype! You all are the reason we want to share our lives with you, and we'd love to share in yours too!

Well, this was the intro.... I shall leave you with that.

Yours truly,
Amber