Our plane arrived in New Orleans around 3:45pm that Thursday afternoon, and AJ was at the airport waiting for us. And thankfully it did not take too long to get out of the airport and get on our way to the hotel where we would be staying for the weekend. Once we got everything dropped off at the hotel we decided to go walk around the city and find something to eat for dinner. Along the way we ran into the parade route of which the NFL kickoff game parade would be traveling. The Saints were playing the Vikings that night at the super dome. We stood and waited for the parade for what seemed like an eternity, but it was definitely worth the wait with the loud music and numerous marching bands (which definitely were NOT like the marching bands here in Iowa...as in these were MUCH better!) After the parade we went and ate dinner at a corner restaurant named "Mothers." It was definitely good to finally eat something since those of us who had been traveling all day had not eaten since that morning when leaving Des Moines around 7am :P After we ate we spent the rest of the evening walking around the city to see the night life. It was definitely a wild evening due to the Saints/Vikings game being watched almost everywhere!
Friday morning we all got up to go do some more walking around the city. We took a walk down Bourbon Street, when we knew we wouldn't be exposed to so much craziness during the day!
We walked down to the French Market and browsed through everything the people were trying to sell in their booths and at their tables. There was some pretty neat stuff! Then we went to the National WWII Museum. We started out by going to the 4-D theater to watch the movie first. It was a pretty neat experience with the vibrating seats, snow, and wind. It really did a good job of making it seem like we were actually there in the middle of the action of WWII. We then went across the street to the museum portion and walked through everything they had there. After we finished going through the museum we went to go find some lunch.
We ended up eating at a small little restaurant just off the main street in what seemed like an alley. It was pretty good food though. When we left the restaurant it had started to rain. We ran across the street to go get some stuff at the CVS (aka Walgreens). It continued to rain while we were inside, and once we were done we hung out under the over-hang for probably almost a half hour waiting for it to stop raining. It wasn't some light rain. The drops were the biggest rain drops I had ever seen, and it was POURING. The streets were flooded, and it was a mess. And we were at least a MILE from the hotel. Finally seeing that we were probably going to be waiting a while, we gave in and decided to just get wet. When we finally got back to the hotel we all looked like drowned rats, and we were able to ring out our clothes in the tub before hanging them up to hopefully dry.Saturday morning we got up to go to the Audubon Zoo. We rode a street car to get there, so that was a fun experience getting to ride through parts of town with the biggest houses ever. The zoo seemed like it wasn't going to take very long to get through being it said to allow 2-3 hours to get through. But uncle Troy and AJ aren't exactly slow walkers :P I was disappointed with their lack of tree frogs, but I was pretty impressed with the "Louisiana Swamp Land" portion being that we do not have the climate for that kind of thing here in the midwest! It was pretty cool to see the alligators creeping around in the swamp water.
But this zoo was also my first time seeing particular animals in the zoo of which I'd never seen in a zoo before: RACOONS. I suppose they are not in our zoos because we have them running around in our back yards, but I still found it somewhat humorous :P They were pretty cute though!
When we were finished with the zoo, we rode a bus back to get to the hotel so that we could watch the Iowa vs Iowa State football game. I was the only Iowa fan among 4 Iowa State fans, but at least I couldn't get picked on too much after that game was over :P After the game AJ and I went to go walk around the city by ourselves. We ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, and it was pretty good. Neither of us were really too terribly hungry at the time being we had ordered pizza for during the football game, but we ate anyway and simply enjoyed each other's company :) After dinner we walked around a little more and met up with the rest of the group to walk through some gift shops as well as walk past Bourbon Street at night to see the craziness. We didn't walk down it though :P
Sunday morning we got up to pack up our things and eat a quick breakfast before AJ brought us all back to the airport to head home. It was a great weekend to just get away, and it was even better to get to see him again even if it had only been 6 weeks since I'd seen him last and still another 10 1/2 months until I'd see him again once he returns home. It was definitely a fun trip :)
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