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New Orleans Vacation Trip Report


kingtermite

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OK...I've finally had a chance to doodle with the camera and phones and get pictures from my vacation compiled. Here is my trip report.
 
I have a little bit of family in New Orleans. One Aunt, One Uncle (now divorced), and their 3 kids (my cousins), William, Jamie and Kelly. I have mostly lost touch with them until Facebook a few years ago. From Facebook we've reconnected a little.
 
 
About 1 1/2 years ago my cousin Kelly (the youngest of the three) announced her engagement to a guy named Rob. She wanted all the family to come to the wedding if they could. My wife and I figured that was enough advance notice that we could probably make it happen, so we've been planning on it for over a year.
 
The plan was to go for Kelly's wedding, and then stay a week to enjoy New Orleans for vacation.
 
 
First the rehearsal dinner (our first night in, just hours off the plane).
 
Kelly and Rob
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Me and my Dad
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Me and my wife, Hope
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The Wedding
William and Elise. William is my cousin (Kelly's older brother). He and his wife (they married about 3-4 years ago) Elise graciously offered to let us stay with them for our time there. We really bonded with them and will surely keep in touch.
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Me and Kelly (the blushing bride)
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With the wedding over, Kelly and Rob postponed their honeymoon to stay in town to be with family for the week following the wedding. The next day we (and rest of family) all went to the French Quarter.
 
French Market Sign in the French Quarter
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Jackson Square at the hart of the French Quarter
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Cafe Du Monde is a famous place in the French Quarter. A plaque says it has been there since the 1860s. They are famous for their coffee with chicory and their beignets. The beignets are basically (to me) more or less a small funnel cake covered with powdered sugar. Everybody raves about them. I thought they were meh. I did enjoy the coffee though.
 
Me with coffee
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Cafe Du Monde Servers
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Family at Cafe Du Monde
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I shall hug him and squeeze him and call him George
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Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District (New Orleans, not Lafayette)
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A few days later my cousin Kelly gave us a personalized tour of Katrina destruction that still exists.
 
They used these Xs with numbers to represent number of dead inside, hazards, etc...
Katrina House Number
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Many houses are still ruined and abandoned.
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That night we went back to the French Quarter at night with Kelly and Rob to do a haunted ghost tour.
 
We started our evening with dinner and drinks at Pat O'Brien's. I'm told it's famous. They supposedly invented the famous "Hurricane" drink, of which I had a few at dinner. I needed it to steady the nerves for the ghosts I was about to encounter.
 
Pat O'Brien's
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Hope and I hanging out with Pat himself.
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About to start the Haunted Ghost Tour. It starts/meets at Rev. Zombie's Voodoo shop. That sounds pretty scary, right?
 
The lady in the white hat was our tour guide. She looked a lot like Roadfrog.
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I didn't see any ghost. Do you see any?
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One of our last stops that week was the famous WWII museum in New Orleans. The story was that this little "personal bunker" was used by German soldiers as they found them more effective than big underground bunkers. They apparently littered these all over in areas that were heavily bombed for soldiers to get in to during bombing raids.
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One of the last days I did an airboat tour of the bayous too, but apparently forgot to add any of those photos to this set I copied over. No airboat pictures for you.
 
 
Overall it was a fun trip. New Orleans is a fun city to spend a week in. Definitely plan for a few days in the French Quarter. It's not big, but there are enough interesting things that it may take more than one day to explore.
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Any transvestite hooker stories?

 

I wandered into a bar on my one trip to N.O. and I would out that most of the she's in there were not really she's.  I left as quickly as I could after enjoying my two overpriced drinks.

 

My trip was no where near as fun as yours.  It was a quick blast into town to pick up some watercraft from a dealer going out of business with no time to get out and really see the town.

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Yay! 

 

Looks like a lot of fun, very cool to reconnect with lost or missing persons.

 

Did you stash a body in the swamp?  Did you add jam to the beignets?  George is awesome!

 

Most importantly, wth is there a WWII museum in NO?

I didn't stash the bodies in the swamp. I just gave them to the gators. No more evidence.

 

 

WWII museum is in New Orleans because Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg (who mostly created/founded it, I think) decided to put it there. Not sure why, exactly.

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New Orleans has a rich history in WWII due to the Higgins boat, built in New Orleans for the war effort.  The old factory there is now a WWII museum.  The Higgins boat, designed and built by Andrew Higgins were designed for troop transport with fast beach landings. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCVP_%28United_States%29

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New Orleans has a rich history in WWII due to the Higgins boat, built in New Orleans for the war effort.  The old factory there is now a WWII museum.  The Higgins boat, designed and built by Andrew Higgins were designed for troop transport with fast beach landings. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCVP_%28United_States%29

That was the only thing that caught my eye specifically ( a really cool fact I did not know previously ), but I don't think that's the reason. I think it something to do with Spielberg/Hanks having ties there or something like that.

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