Another no so good sleeping night – the noise is still there. I’m going with the one ear plug strategy – blocking out the noise in one ear and letting the pillows do the rest.
Up really early – something
that always happens on ships – and at the Oceanview Café at opening. There were
already a lot of people up there – I guess they wanted to be ready to get off
in New Orleans when we arrive at 10:00 AM. The ship is just a ways away from the Crescent City Bridge.
I tried everything today at
breakfast – pancakes with syrup, oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins,
scrambled eggs, and eggs over medium.
But nothing really did the job – mostly a breakfast sampler. My own fault for not having a breakfast plan. I did meet someone interesting at breakfast, another Cruise Duck - just sitting there on the window sill. This duck was all decked out in Mardi Gras duds.
The ship pulled into the
Julia Street Pier at just about 10:00 AM and it took about an hour for the ship
to be cleared by the local authorities. We
could see people getting on tour busses from our cabin window. Our plan was to stroll through parts of
downtown and then through the French Quarter.
We exited the ship and walked a few blocks past the parking lots and outlet mall until we got to Canal Street. From there we took a soft right and walked parallel to the Mississippi River. We eventually got on Decatur Street and came across the statue of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville,
who founded the city of New Orleans in 1718. The statue also contains a monk who accompanied Bienville and a Native American, representing the original inhabitants of the area. We continued on Decatur until we reached famous Jackson Square.
The place was literally saturated with evangelicals sporting red shirts and baseball caps. We walked through them and they said nothing. Jackson Square was not that busy although there were some people decked out in Mardi Gras costumes.
I got some great pictures of the statue of Andrew Jackson as well as the St. Louis Cathedral.
We continued along Chartres St until we got to St. Philip Street where we turned left to Royal St. I got a picture of Royal St.
and then we continue up another block to Bourbon St, the heart of the French Quarter.
We
walked along Bourbon St for a couple of blocks before going over to the next
street, Dauphine St.
We saw many interesting buildings in the French Quarter including the French Quarter Hotel
and the Andrew Jackson Hotel
At this point, we decided that we needed to get back to the ship but that walking back was not realistic. I called an Uber and was surprised that one was just a few minutes away (I was wrong in assuming that Ubers stayed away from the French Quarter due to the crazy streets and traffic). Before our pickup, we found someone who took out picture with a harlequin, very Mardi Gras.
Brian, our driver, met us the
entrance of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Canal Street. The ride was a mini-tour of the Warehouse
District an area now converting warehouses into hotels. Brian dropped us off at the entrance to the
pier – the Uber ride (3.2 miles) cost $19.97 (including a $5 tip for giving us
a lot of information on the ride back).
I went to the ship and Ellen went to the Outlet Mall.
Lunch was in the Oceanview Cafe - Pizza and Salad. It did come with a nice view.
We had dinner again in the San Marco Dining Room because they had
trout on the menu. I had a wonderful
mushroom appetizer, green salad (foo foo lettuce, unfortunately), and tomato chick
pea soup (OK), and a mini-Margherita pizza off the kid’s menu (which was
awful). We both tried the apple pie a la
mode and that wasn’t so great either. I
did get two cups of hot “decaf” coffee. Since it was Mardi Gras eve, there were fireworks out on the pier, which we could see from our dining room seats.
The show tonight was a Neil Diamond tribute show, “So Good”, starring actor Robert Neary.
He told us he had been acting for 30 years
and when auditions dried up, he put together this tribute show. He looked so much like Neil Diamond that it
was a little scary especially since he was able to get a lot of his moves down
as well as a pretty good impression of his voice. The audience liked him – maybe due to the
drink packages – and his show was entertaining.
I’m not a big fan of tribute shows especially in this case because Neil
Diamond retired due to Parkinson’s.
After the show, we stopped in
the Rendezvous Lounge and then
headed to the room. The gangway is now
on Deck 2 so our deck is cold – in fact, the whole ship is cold.
Lights out at 10:30 PM.
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