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mtn.climber
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PostWed Mar 04, 2015 9:02 pm 
Wifey and I are headed down to New Orleans next month for the opening weekend of the jazz festival. Planning on spending a week. For anyone that's spent time there, what are some of the must-dos?

Reach for the sky, cuz tomorrow may never come. Live the life of love. Love the life you live.
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Seventy2002
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PostThu Mar 05, 2015 1:16 am 
Must eat: Oysters at Pascal's Manale Restaurant Shrimp and grits at the Grand Isle Restaurant Breakfast or brunch at Elizabeth's and/or Tout de Suite Beignets at Cafe du Monde Walk around Jackson Square, stop for a drink at Harry's Corner on Chartres St. Take a carriage ride and see the French Quarter and St. Louis Cemetery #1.

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Frosty
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PostThu Mar 05, 2015 7:58 am 
We went to the Upperline for a really nice meal. Best fried green tomatoes ever! Still make their recipe with the shrimp remoulade... Yum. We also went on a swamp tour, good to get back in amongst the spanish moss and see a few gators. You can also take a ferry across the Mississippi and walk around the other side. Go for a street car ride and look at all the architecture. Read a few real estate ads. I vote for the Metairie cemetary, to see the weeping angel. You've got to go to the Backstreet Cultural Museum, it is amazing. up.gif My husband went to check out the Confederate motorcycle company. He really enjoyed seeing their bikes. Music is everywhere and it wasn't even Jazz Festival when we were there. I just love music in the streets smile.gif WWOZ is the jazz radio station, they stream online so you can get in the mood before you go! Now I am craving some spicey cheese grits for breakfast! Enjoy your holiday.

Frosty, Lucky enough to live where it snows in the winter! smile.gif
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joker
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PostThu Mar 05, 2015 9:22 am 
Eat. No mediocre meals allowed - that is a waste of opportunity! If I were going I'd check the message boards on chowhound.com and also see if I could scare up an old local colleague who always had great tips on lesser-known but amazing restaurants, though even the shrimp po-boys from little holes in the wall can be pretty OK for lunch there. Beignets = fried dough. They're yummy for fried dough, but I didn't eat my whole one, and never went back on later trips. But that café is in a cool spot, which brings up walking the River Walk along the river. Walking out to the Zoo and along the nearby Garden District will give you a very different feel than the French District (some people would suggest that these walks will bring you through areas that are way too dangerous for tourists to walk; I never felt at all under threat when walking there during the day... Walk walk walk. See a blues band if you're at all into that. If you have a car and want to see the bayou w/o the hoopla and $ of a tour, drive out to Bayou Jean Lafite (SP?), where there's a boardwalk that goes out a ways into the bayou. I thought it was very cool, not being familiar with that sort of biome.

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RichardJ
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PostThu Mar 05, 2015 12:32 pm 
Walk all the streets of the French Quarter. Lots to do all around Jackson Square. I have not been there for many years, but the places I remember that my wife, work friends, and I always went to was Pat O'Briens for the Hurricanes and outdoor court, Acme Oyster House, Cafe Du Monde for chicory coffee and beignets breakfast hangout. My favorite place for gumbo and mudbugs is across the street from Cafe Du Monde called Tujague's (special place…look it up). Some of these places may be touristy, but really, most places are at the French Quarter. Walking around and popping in and out everywhere is a great way to discover your own little gems. Hotel Monteleone is a spectacular place to stay. Sad to see our favorite place for crawdads and live Zydeco music and dancing is now closed…Cajun Cabin frown.gif Explore, don't get too full on food and drink at your first stops, and start when they close the streets down in the French Quarter to traffic. We loved the zoo and New Orleans is an antique shop lover's dream come true for really old stuff. Man, I want to go back soooooo bad.

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joker
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PostThu Mar 05, 2015 1:45 pm 
RichardJ wrote:
We loved the zoo
It used to be an awful zoo but they did a tremendous re-make a few decades back and created really nice spaces for most of the animals, at least as far as zoos go in that regard. I got to work with them a bit on exhibits there which was fun - also did a little work with the aquarium around when it opened, at which point it was one of the best in the country. They had a really cool conference room behind their big "Gulf tank" - has to be the coolest conference room I've been in. One wall had a huge oval window into that big tank. We were sitting near where the filtered water was being pumped back into the big tank - which the lazy nurse sharks had figured out was a great place to hang. They are ram ventilators and must "swim or die" ... unless they happen to find a source of strong current where they can just lay on the bottom and let the water move itself over their gills. the aquarium folks were mostly not amused, as this left one of their marquee fish hanging out in a spot that was not wildly visible to visitors, who don't generally end up in that conference room, except for brief moments of shark activity at feeding time. But I digress. Cool zoo and aquarium! Frankie and Johnie's is a fun restaurant out near the Zoo and Tulane where you can get a big mess o' boiled crawdads and all the fixin's. Not high cuisine, but it was fun and good for things like the crawdads. Back in the '80s they, intriguingly, had lots of pictures of the Boston Celtics on the walls, of all things. As I pondered this, my brother in law offered "great white hope." It is a different culture down there for sure. What my zoo and aquarium colleague (who was super well connected in local politics called "the northernmost banana republic."

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Traildad
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PostThu Mar 05, 2015 5:20 pm 
Doppelganger wrote:
Get out of town smile.gif
Ditto. If you have a car head south into the delta down Highway 23. You will feel like you have stepped back in time and maybe into a different dimension. Might help to take a translator biggrin.gif

Life is short so live it well.
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Schroder
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PostThu Mar 05, 2015 6:09 pm 
If you're a history buff, you could go to Chalmette and see where the Battle of New Orleans took place, the last battle of the War of 1812.

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CC
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PostThu Mar 05, 2015 10:33 pm 
The main thing to do in NO is exactly what you are going there for: listen to music.

First your legs go, then you lose your reflexes, then you lose your friends. Willy Pep
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lookout bob
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PostFri Mar 06, 2015 7:46 am 
drink.gif cheers.gif drink.gif cheers.gif breakdance.gif guns.gif rockband.gif

"Altitude is its own reward" John Jerome ( from "On Mountains")
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joker
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PostFri Mar 06, 2015 10:05 am 
Yes, there are those who appear to travel there mainly for the go cups. Reminds me of watching a guy puke onto the bumper of a cop car that was parked in an alley off Bourbon Street on one Friday night. Where middle America goes to lose its inhibitions...

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Gray
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PostFri Mar 06, 2015 1:59 pm 
Po-boys from Mother's. Po-boys from about anywhere else. Must haves: roast beef (w/debris gravy), oyster, catfish, "Ferdie". Sit in the courtyard and drink a Hurricane at Pat O'Briens. Get a drink at Lafitte's Blacksmith shop. The building was build in 1772, and is likely the coolest bar I've ever been to. Take the streetcar into the Garden District and walk around. Drive across the Lake Ponchetrain bridge. Since you are across, might as well head in to Abita Springs, and go have lunch and a Turbo Dog at Abita Brewpub. Try the crawfish tail po-boy. If you can take a day, drive the old river road and check out plantations. Oak Alley, for sure. End the day with a visit to Avery Isle, and explore the gardens/bird sanctuary. Perhaps take the short "tour" of the Tabasco plant there. Take a swamp tour, or two. Benieigts and chicory coffee at Cafe du Monde. Then walk down and check out the French Market. Keep heading that way and walk around the Faubourg Marigny. I love going there in the evening on a Friday or Saturday night, when Bourbon is full of puking frat boys... the Faubourg has a lot more locals, and lots of weird tiny little hole in the wall bars. Do "Jazz Brunch" on a Sunday at The Court of the Two Sisters. If a place has gumbo, try a cup of it. Every time. Fontainebleau State Park, across the lake near Mandeville, offers some easy access to the land. Most of it is non-swampy, but has a very different set of plantlife than anything around here. Look out for quicksand near the lake smile.gif

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Schroder
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PostFri Mar 06, 2015 3:28 pm 
The pickpockets in the French Quarter are the worst I've experienced anywhere. I was at a conference there in the 80's where one of my business associates was stabbed to death on Bourbon Street when he tried to fight off one. Just use common sense precautions walking around there.

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