New Orleans is a HAPPY place.....

...in spite of all the turmoil and destruction it has been through in recent years. We left Irving, Texas on March 1st and headed straight to New Orleans on our way south to Florida. It was Louis Dean's very first visit to that magical city. We left so very early in the morning that we arrived in time to spend the entire evening as well as the morning and early afternoon of the next day! My daughter, Summer, acted as our personal travel agent from her office in Dallas and as we approached the city limits, she found us a GREAT little hotel right smack dab in the heart of The French Quarter...the Prince Conti Hotel! Now since we had planned only a short visit to NO, I knew the things I wanted to show my husband!

First of all we did a little walking tour of the French Quarter on our way to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. The servers that night....as well as everyone else in NO...are still basking in the glow of winning the Super Bowl! Apparently we timed our visit just right- she said the few weeks before had been jammed packed crazy- and this was the first 'slow' time in quite awhile! Louis Dean (who has been on the South Beach Diet) ordered one of the BEST hamburgers ever and had water with lemon as his beverage! While I had a nice little salad AND a margarita! After all....I was in Margaritavile! After dinner we strolled on down to Cafe Du Monde for the famous cafe au lait and beignets. Delicious! As we made our way back to the hotel we were hoping to catch a carriage ride but they had disappeared by then. It was really cold and we were glad to have our coats and wished for the gloves and scarves we had left at home! Our hotel room was charming and offered a late check out so we took advantage of that and slept in the next morning.

After retrieving our car from the valet parking that had held it safe in the bowels of the building somewhere (it did not appear to be big enough for a garage in there but I guess it WAS!) we meandered around until we found a cemetary. The graves are all above ground one and most of them were very old! I was surprised to see a few stones as recent as 2005 and 2006, however! You could see the damage from Katrina and the cemetary continues to be in a state of disrepair even as it is BEING repaired! We were glad it was open for visitors.

The French Market was our next stop! A jazz band played in an open air cafe so I got us a couple of cups of coffee and we settled down to listen at a nice table.....and that's when the band quit playing! SO...we took our coffee and browsed through the stalls in the Market Place. I found a new cap and LD picked up a couple of Louis Armstrong CD's!

 After taking a look at the Mighty Mississippi we got back in the car and tried our best to find I10 and head out of town! That was not as easy to do as I thought since we wound around a large section of town that continues to show the ravages of the hurricane....houses, streets, businesses. It was sad.

The thing that impressed us the most about New Orleans was how upbeat and happy the people were! There is a lesson in that to me. All too often I feel a stirring of discontent if there is a home project I need to do ( getting the new gazebo up....finish painting the exterior of the house now in the THIRD year!) and it just doesn't get done as quickly as I would like. I must and DO remind myself that it takes time to accomplish things and to just keep moving forward with the confidence that it WILL come to pass! That's the attitude I perceived in the residents of New Orleans!