We started our last full day in New Orleans with breakfast at the Ruby Slipper cafe. Biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, bananas foster beignets. We had the most wonderful server from Zimbabwe who chatted with us.
We dropped the kids back at the hotel and went to hear a timeshare presentation. We got our hotel for this trip for free, but in exchange we had to listen to a presentation. They really do a good job of making it sound appealing and worthwhile, but even if we hadn’t gone into it knowing with absolute certainty that it wasn’t for us, asking questions and doing the math ourselves would have proven it.
Next we headed to City Park. It’s bigger than Central Park in New York, and it contains the highest point in the City of New Orleans at 27 feet above sea level. The park’s website jokes that oxygen and sherpas are available for those who want to scale the peak. The park is full of colossal, gorgeous, old oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. Here’s a pic of the first one we found on entering the park, with kids in the lower left corner for scale.
We went to Carousel Gardens, a little amusement park inside City Park. It’s tiny and inexpensive, and a lot of the rides are geared toward much younger kids than ours, but we found plenty to do. There was a little roller coaster, some swings, bumper cars, a Ferris wheel, and a tilt-a-whirl. Interspersed through the park were more gorgeous oak trees.
The carousel was installed in 1906, one of the first in the world. All of the animals are hand carved from wood, some as far back as 1885. The carousel still uses its original engine from 1906!
We just could not get over how beautiful the giant old trees were, dripping with Spanish moss. On our walk out of the park, we stopped so the kids could climb a bit.
Our journey back took us through pretty neighborhoods and eventually down Bourbon Street, where we enjoyed the music in the streets.
We had dinner at Napoleon house again, because we just couldn’t stay away from their artichoke dip.
The next morning, before heading to the airport, the kids and I did a little shopping while Bill worked. It was really lucky that I had already bought a mask, because I some some incredible masks that were super expensive.
We stopped for lunch on the way back. I would have liked to try somewhere new, but the kids begged for Napoleon house, yet again. It will definitely be on our list the next time we come to New Orleans!