It was a Thursday afternoon and I was helping my sons pack their bags, while my husband and I were already packed and ready to go. My husband had recently been on a business trip to New Orleans and wanted to go back with the family.
We live in Houston, so it was an easy flight on Friday morning. It was Spring break and we had both taken Friday off from work so we had 3 days as a family to spend in New Orleans. This is how it went:
Day 1
We had each been assigned a day (based on days randomly drawn out of a hat) - with the boys sharing a day. Day 1, Friday, had been assigned to my husband, then day 2 to the boys and day 3 to me.
For breakfast, we headed into the French Quarter and settled on a place called French Toast. The food there was surprisingly good and afterwards we went to the first place on the agenda: The WW2 museum.
This also surprised me and ended up being a very enjoyable experience. They had interactive displays, planes and the scripting of all the infographics and diagrams were great! That took us until after lunch and then we decided to get some ice-cream. That night, we visited the french quarter and ate at Willie Mae's Scotch House.
(My husband got the idea for dinner from this article: https://www.whereyat.com/new-orleans-favorite-black-owned-restaurants)
Day 2
We started our day slightly late and got coffees and beignes for the road. That day we were heading to the zoo and then, if there was time, we were going to see Studio Be.
I really enjoyed the habitats that mimicked the swamps of Louisiana. The animals and plant life from there are so unique and interesting to watch. The boys absolutely loved it, but we were too tired to enjoy everything.
We didn’t make it to Studio Be and instead, grabbed some early dinner and then caught an early jazz show at the restaurant.
Day 3
On my day, I decided we were going to be taking it easy. So I changed up my original schedule to accommodate for that.
We had a nice slow breakfast on Magazine street and did a bit of shopping. We got some more beignets at the mall (when in New Orleans) to sustain us and then walked it off at the next spot: City Park.
We let the kids go on some of the rides at the amusement park there and rented some swan boats for an hour. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I didn’t want to leave! To top off the weekend, we had a lovely dinner in the french quarter and I might have had one too many wines because the next day my head was ringing!
The next morning we boarding our flights home and said goodbye to the Big Easy. Something was telling me this wouldn’t be our last encounter.