In New Orleans we spent most of our time exploring the beautiful French Quarter. It was wonderful just strolling around admiring the wrought iron balconies, hanging-baskets overflowing with flowers, and listening to jazz and blues drifting out of bars.
It was a joy to explore the French Quarter, and happily there were plenty of streets criss-crossing so that every time you turned a corner there was another example of beautiful architecture ahead of you.
The pretty St Louis Cathedral is right in the centre of the French Quarter. You can sit at a cafe and enjoy coffee and beignets (yummy pastry doughnut-style balls in icing sugar – perfect with a coffee!) while watching the street performers and soaking up the atmosphere. Travel Tip: They don’t take credit or debit cards at some of these cafes so you need cash!
Bourbon Street in the French Quarter was the centre of the action particularly at night – most of the restaurants and bars are around here and it is is lively and fun. People drinking on balconies above threw strings of beads down to people below, so we came away wearing several strings of bright beads.
And yes, we tried the infamous “Hurricane” and “Hand Grenade” drinks – basically an alcoholic drink in a large plastic novelty glass. My verdict? They were pleasant and sweet tasting. I preferred the Hand Grenade, but the advertising saying “New Orleans’ Most Powerful Drink” made me laugh as it wasn’t strong compared to what I’m used to. They were certainly nice though, and you get a souvenir glass. We managed to get our 2 glasses (complete with grenade-shaped ice cube thingy) home on the plane so now if we have a dinner party we can serve wine in our plastic bright green foot-high grenade-shaped glasses! Nothing says sophistication like neon green plastic.
One night we had a smallish cockroach in our room. Not the first and it almost certainly won’t be the last. Normally our well-oiled insect capture procedure springs into action (trap it under a cup, put paper below the cup, hence trapping it, and take it outside). This time it went completely wrong. My BF trapped it between a cup and paper, but somehow it escaped and CRAWLED UP HIS ARM!! Cue lots of screaming etc. My BF then left the cup on a surface and I DRANK FROM IT!! We should just give up and go home…!
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Big Fat Tourist 
Oh wow great post, I have always heard such incredible things about New Orleans!
Thanks! It was wonderful, and I’ve got more posts coming about NOLA so stay tuned! 🙂