After the WW2 Museum we headed to the French Market and Jackson Square, (on the Hop-On bus) which were both side by side and in the general area of the paddle wheel cruise this evening.
The French Market was pretty big, but not as big as I had anticipated. There were a lot of food stalls which looked quite tasty, and a few produce stalls, which were mostly empty (as in sold out for the day) and a whole slew of tacky souvenir stalls, all selling the same types of things, you know, poorly made T-shirts, those resin/plastic items like little coffins, skeletons, riverboats etc. Like Dollar Store items. A ton of genuine alligator heads and parts, keychains and so forth. Towards the end there were a lot of local artists though, and that was fun. A lot of paintings, carvings, jewellery etc. I bought a tiny watercolour, and we had a delicious mango sno-cone.
It was interesting, and I’d have been sad if I didn’t go, but believe me, it’s certainly not what it’s hyped up to be. Imagine your local farmers market times 10, but besides the “good local” stuff add in huge amounts of crap.
After we left there we walked over to Jackson Square, which was a really pretty place to sit in the shade and rest and people-watch. It’s a roughly city block in size, and the streets surrounding it are filled with artists, musicians, street performers and the like.
At one time it was the site of public executions and the hanging of slaves, but today it is filled with live music and concerts.
The church is St Louis Cathedral, the oldest continuously operating church in the United States.
We then headed over to Cafe Du Monde, just a few minutes walk away.
‘Café du Monde is the world's most famous coffee shop and a New Orleans institution. Found at the end of the French Market and the corner of Jackson Square in New Orleans' French Quarter, Café du Monde has been serving up their crispy beignets and creamy cafés au lait since 1862.”
Apparently you “need” to go there if you are in New Orleans, and indeed, it was on my list of things I wanted to see, but honestly, every other beignet place we tried was superior. I think this cafe has fallen into the “tourists must post their Instagram pictures” trap. It was crowded, noisy and busy. I will say, the service was 100% excellent and the coffee was really good (made with chicory) The beignets were smaller than other places, but they were lighter and fluffier, and with much more powdered sugar. They were super messy to eat! The atmosphere was more like a food stand (albeit a giant one!) at a carnival as opposed to a world famous coffee spot.
We found the place where we were to get on the boat, luckily there was shade and lots of seating. A local we had spoken to a few days earlier told us the best hint he could give us was to be in that line-up by 5:30, (even though the tickets said 6 and we had reservations for 6 for dinner) but he was so correct. We were about 10th in line, and even though they do this twice daily, every day, the staff seemed to be incredibly confused. No one ever did ask to see my ticket, they asked if I had one and that seemed to suffice. We walked inside and down a level and were seated at a little table for two.
It was a pretty sizeable dining room. The table had bread and a large bowl of salad, as well as water, so we just started to eat. In a few minutes our server came by with bowls of seafood gumbo, which was one of the “ok” ones. Not great, but very spicy. The dinner itself was buffet style, and while researching which boat to take and whether or not to have the dinner, a lot of people said not to bother, that the dinner was either awful, or “so many better places to eat in New Orleans” . I hemmed and hawed and my final thoughts were: Well, we can’t really eat a dinner prior, because that would be eating at 3 or 4 pm, too soon, and we didn’t really want to eat after as that would be 9-9:30 which might be too late. We are old and like to eat our dinner at 6:30-7-ish. Plus, it’s not like we weren’t going to have the opportunity to eat at other places, and as well, eating on the boat with live jazz playing is part of the whole experience. I knew it wouldn’t be any sort of 5-star meal, after all, whipping up a buffet for a few hundred people day after day has got be pretty routine.
Anyhow, it was fine. Well, better than fine, but not over-the-top-spectacular. We both enjoyed it thoroughly. There was baked chicken, seafood pasta (with crawfish and shrimp) jambalaya, green beans & bacon, a pasta primavera, fingerling potatoes, banana’s foster and white chocolate bread pudding. There was a charge for beer and wine, which we had, but we never did get a bill.
We finished eating about 7, just in time for the boat to set sail. I may or may not have had a second bread pudding first.
The cruise was really nice. It was evening by now, so the sun had gone down and the breeze off of the water was much appreciated! There were three floors that we could wander though, and lots of seating. The live band was on the upper deck, with a bar and snacks as well. The city lights and passing boats at night were beautiful.
I’m not a big fan of jazz and blues, but this band; The Dukes of Dixieland were really good, and did a lot of familiar songs, the lead singer had a very “Louis Armstrong” voice and did a lot of his music.
The two hours went by quite quickly, there was some historical narration the whole time, so we could pick up a few interesting facts.
When the boat docked, the thought of walking back to the hotel seemed so very exhausting that when I spotted a line-up of pedicabs, I jumped right in one! How these guys do this all day long amazes me. Our fellow and his wife both do it, they must have thighs of steel. Luckily New Orleans is fairly flat, but still, hauling around all these fat-ass tourists has got to take a toll.
Anyhow, we were back at our room soon enough, and got ourselves organized and packed for leaving tomorrow. Luckily our plane doesn't until around 3 pm, so we can take our time in the morning.
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