New Orleans: Day 3

Had another early morning today! Started with the complimentary buffet breakfast downstairs in the casino. Describing it as "mediocre" may misrepresent it too positively. Next time - we go out for breakfast. We got exactly what we paid for on this one! After studying the streetcar maps for a while, we felt pretty confident about using it as transportation for the day. It still wasn't that simple, and there was some initial confusion about where exactly the street car going to the Garden District stopped, but we ended up waiting for only 5 or 10 minutes and along it came.


It took 20-30 minutes to get to the Garden District from the shopping area where we caught the St. Charles streetcar. The Garden District is my favorite area of New Orleans - it's clean, it's leafy and it is full of Old South plantation goodness. The Victorian homes in this section of the city have been around for centuries, which makes them seem even more grand as you drive past them on the streetcar. We decided to take the streetcar all the way to the end where it turns around, but to be honest, there's not much to see once you pass the Tulane and Loyola campuses. We also walked through a little bit of Audubon Park across from the campuses then hopped on the streetcar and headed back the way we came.

Our next stop was to head to the Canal Street Ferry to go check out the historic town of Algiers across the Mississippi River. It all worked out because we didn't really have anything else to do, but if we had, this would have been a monumental waste of time. We grabbed a map at the ferry building that indicated all the historic landmarks in Algiers to check out. The ferry ride took less than 10 minutes to get across the river. Algiers is a small area laid out in a grid, but after about ten steps in, we realized there was nothing to see or do here. We went and found a couple of the locations on the map which were pretty unremarkable, and then headed back toward a restaurant we had seen at the ferry, the Dry Dock Bar & Grill. We got just enough to tide us over until our dinner reservation and headed back across on the ferry, joking about how we should tell everyone waiting on the ferry at the other side to "Turn around - there's nothing to see."


After we got back from Algiers, we decided to use the streetcar pass we had that was good for the whole day to take the Riverfront streetcar up the Mississippi River...just a way to kill some time and see a little more of the city from a different perspective. This ultimately turned out to be pretty pointless, as there wasn't much to see from where the rail runs, but it did provide some much-needed time off our feet. Bottom line - the St. Charles streetcar line is the only one worth taking if you are looking for a sightseeing-type ride.

By this point it was time to go take a nap (yay) and get ready for our dinner reservation at Emeril Lagasse's restaurant, NOLA. And what a delicious meal this was! I had the Barbecued Gulf Shrimp with Rosemary Biscuit as an appetizer at the suggestion of our fantastic waiter. For my entree, I went with the Grilled Seasonal Fish with Fingerling Potatoes, Sweet Corn, Portobello Fries, Grape Tomatoes and Black Truffle Butter Sauce (I can't remember what type of fish it was, oops!). But anyways, everything was amazing. I love restaurants where all the plates are set down at the same time and they use the little crumb sweeper to tidy up your table between each course. I had a bite of the NOLA Banana Pudding Layer Cake off my dad's dessert plate, but I couldn't hold much more food in. Next time, that banana pudding is MINE!


We have to be up quite early tomorrow morning to catch the return train back to Birmingham, so making it an early night. Goodbye New Orleans...until next time!

New Orleans: Day 2

We woke up bright and early this morning for a jam-packed day of touristy activities in the Big Easy. By 9:00am, we were waiting in a massive line in the French Market for a table at the famous Cafe Du Monde. This 24-hour cafe is famous for it's square French-style doughnuts covered in powdered sugar. The chicory coffee is also pretty popular, although I settled for the fresh-squeezed orange juice.


There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the seating system in the cafe, so as soon as we saw a family standing up from their table we swarmed it and waited for our waitress to wipe it off. The servers here aren't exactly known for their mastery of the English language, but as long as you are getting beignets and coffee/orange juice, you should be good. The beignets come three to a plate, so an order is just right for one person. And they were just as good as I remember! It takes a certain skill to eat them and not stand up doused in powdered sugar, but I'm happy to report this was one of my finer performances at Cafe Du Monde. I don't recommend wearing black if it's your first beignet experience!


For the next hour we strolled around the French Market, which is a section of the city lined with antique stores, souvenir shops, etc. We walked the short distance over to Jackson Square, the home of St. Louis Cathedral, for a few photos. Although it was a breezy winter day, this was a beautiful morning to walk around this landmark area of New Orleans.


We decided to make the 20-minute walk to our next stop, the National World War II Museum. Had it been raining, this would have been a cab ride, but like I said before, we were having a cool, sunny day - perfect for a walk. When we arrived, we went to the main entrance and purchased tickets for the 4-D intro film and passes for the museum. We headed next door to the Solomon Victory Theater, where there was already a line waiting for the next showing. I noticed there was a counter to purchase tickets to the film and museum at the theater as well with much shorter lines than at the main museum entrance we had just come from.

I've found lots of these types of introductory videos in museums can be pretty hit or miss, but this one is definitely not to be missed! Tom Hanks narrates "Beyond All Boundaries," a 50-minute film that basically summarizes the history and major battles of World War II, a good refresher for those of us who haven't thought about World War II since high school history class. The film was so well-presented that you just can't skip it if you are making a stop at the museum.

After the film we went through the entire museum back over in the main building. Being the Monday after Christmas, the museum felt a little crowded. There were entire rooms dedicated to Normandy, the atomic bomb, etc. I really enjoyed seeing all the information about the battles in Japan where one of my uncles had fought - I realized how very little we learn about the Japanese theater in the war, as I hardly recognized any of the locations or names. I felt the same way about the battle at Normandy - reading about all the other battles that happened at the same time, it made me realize there was so much more going on all down that stretch of beach, rather than just a bunch of Americans jumping off the boats at Normandy. One of my favorite things I saw was actually just a tiny detail, but it shows how such a small thing can alter the course of history: In a glass case, the museum had the original typed draft of Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech response to Pearl Harbor. The draft also had Roosevelt's handwritten edits all over the paper, including one of the most famous lines in history being re-worded. The draft read "a date which will live in world history," and then 'world history' was scratched out to read "infamy." What a famous line that almost never came to be!


The museum was fantastic. On our way out, we took a quick photo with the Higgins boat featured in the main entrance room. The Higgins boat, which was the landing craft that brought the American soldiers to shore in every major amphibious assault during the war, was built by Andrew Jackson Higgins and 30,000 other Louisiana workers in Southeast Louisiana. Dwight Eisenhower once claimed that Higgins was "the man who won the war for us." This boat is the reason the National World War II Museum is housed in New Orleans today.


By this point, we were all starving so decided to head over to the waterfront where we were sure there were places to eat. This was a pretty good walk, but we stumbled upon Poppy's Time Out Sports Bar & Grill, which hit the spot as a good-chill place for some bar food and lots of big TVs so that we didn't miss the Georgia Tech game. Although with the divison championships coming up, it looked like the New Orleans Saints had thrown up all over the restaurant. :) I had the crab cake po'boy which was very filling and tasty, especially for a sports bar. The most shocking deal, perhaps coming from the land of $15 mixed drinks, was that for an extra $2, you could make a 12oz beer a 32oz beer that came in a souvenir Saints cup. Pretty decent way to spend $6!

It had been a long day at this point, so we decided to head back to the hotel for a few hours to nap, watch basketball and get ready for our evening plans. After a little re-energizing, we walked back down toward the French Market to the #1 thing I was looking forward to doing, the Haunted History Ghost Tour! We arrived a little early for the 8pm tour, which begins at Reverend Zombie's Voodoo Shop, but our tour guide let us know that if we went next door to Finnegan's, they would give us a 20% discount on a drink that we could then walk around with on the tour. Good old New Orleans with the complete lack of open-container laws...gotta love it.

The tour lasted approximately two hours, and I loved every second of it! Our tour guide was full of information and seemed to have a lot of conviction with what she was saying, which pretty much got me completely caught up in the stories. The tour was pretty extensive, taking us all through the French Quarter and filling us in on a lot of the history of the area - the stories that surrounded the ghosts in the area really made it easy to picture the area as it must have been hundreds of years ago. The LaLaurie Mansion provided perhaps the most disturbing of all the stories, so I'm glad our group hit that spot near the end of the tour. It would have been hard for any of the other stories to top that one! Unfortunately, no ghosts showed up in the photo I took:


Another part of the tour that was fun was when we went to a haunted bar, Jean Lafitte's Old Absinthe House. They gave us time to grab a drink to finish the tour out with (a hurricane for me!) and explore the areas where they have the most ghost sightings in the bar. Again, we headed to the spot where the most ghosts had turned up on film - by the piano - but no luck for us:


After being hit up for tips at the end of the tour, we were famished so headed back to Harrah's where the boys wanted to gamble and we all wanted to grab a foot long Lucky Dog. Now I don't know if we were just that hungry, but we parked at a poker table and scarfed those dogs down pretty darn fast. Tomorrow we're going to head to the Garden District and go across the river to Algiers, so time to rest up!

New Orleans: Day 1

We departed from the Birmingham Amtrak station at noon today on Amtrak's Crescent Route, which originated in New York the day prior. The Birmingham station would prove to be the least impressive of all stations we would pass through, which is odd seeing as how it is one of the biggest cities on the route. There was something a little strange about walking onto a train already filled with people who had been on it an entire day before us - it was almost like we were hopping into their little private world for just a few stops. My parents had made this train trip before, so they knew the best way to book a reservation for a family of 4 was with two of the "roomettes" - these are the private compartments in the sleeper car that can seat (and sleep!) two comfortably. There is also a private toilet and sink inside the compartment which took a little getting used to, but once you get over fact you are just going to be sitting next to a toilet for the trip, it really stops phasing you. :) The accommodations were very clean and the steward on board was friendly (okay, overly-friendly) and was there at our every beck and call to answer questions and make sure we were comfortable.

My favorite part of riding the train was the dining car, which we got to experience twice on the trip down. The food in the dining car was surprisingly delicious! These meals are inclusive in a roomette reservation, but cost extra if you only book a coach seat. I felt it was definitely worth the extra money to have them included, as the meals were fantastic and having no financial barrier, I was free to order exactly what I wanted. Not to mention, lugging on enough food for all the meals we ate on the train would have been a hassle. For lunch I had a salad and catfish and for dinner I had the Angus burger. I hadn't prepared myself to also eat an included dessert at lunch, but I was ready for all my future meals and thoroughly enjoyed my dinner cheesecake as a result. Birmingham is a perfect location on the route to be able to squeak out two meals. As soon as we boarded the train they had the call for lunch, and we were sitting down to dinner as we rolled through the Hattiesburg station. Perfect timing to eat and get back to our cars in time to debark.


Another fun part of being on the train was that we packed a bottle of wine and some beer in a cooler, and were able to sit and enjoy the world flying by with a glass of wine in hand.


Aside from the dining car, the trip was relaxing and uneventful. I enjoyed pulling in to the different stations because they all looked so different - it seemed that the smaller the station, the nicer it had been maintained: Tuscaloosa (Loserville USA), the home of the University of Alabama campus, crossing over the Tombigbee River and the Alabama/Mississippi State Line into Meridian, Laurel, Hattiesburg, through DeSoto National Forest into Picayune, over the Mississippi/Louisiana State Line, Slidell and finally crossing six miles over Lake Pontchartrain and entering New Orleans. This is not a mode of transportation if you are looking to cut off travel time - the trip actually took a little longer than it would have taken to drive from Birmingham to New Orleans (the train trip was approximately 7.5 hours). But it is a great way to travel if time isn't at a premium, and you just want to relax and enjoy the trip rather than have to drive it.


We found it helpful to use our Google Maps iPhone app to determine exactly where we were when we were passing through what otherwise looked like a lot of nothingness.


Seven hours on the train was about right, though, and I think everyone was ready to get off by the time we pulled in to our destination. We were off the train around 7:30pm and took a quick cab ride from the train station to Harrah's, where we will be staying for the next few days. The hotel is in a pretty centrally-located area for the things we have planned, and it is connected to the Harrah's Casino, which my brother and father are planning to spend some serious time in. I'm no gambler, but even I can appreciate the five-second walk outside to cross over to the casino! The hotel is very nice, especially for a casino hotel, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone staying in New Orleans looking for a place that will be in walking distance of most of New Orleans' attractions.


We took a quick trip down to the casino, but I was quickly reminded that smoking indoors is still allowed in places outside of New York, so it didn't take much time before the long trip started to catch up with me and I just wanted to be back upstairs in my smoke-free bed. Tomorrow we have a full day planned, so time to get a good night's sleep!

Miles Traveled Today: 350
Total Miles Traveled: 7,571

Birmingham: Days 1-3

It's been fantastic being back in Birmingham! The weather has been gorgeous the past couple days with temperatures getting all the way up into the low 70s. New York appears to be preparing for a blizzard right now, so I can't say I'm complaining! Unfortunately, it's about to take a cold turn and it's not supposed to be much warmer in New Orleans, so it may have been wishful thinking to leave my coat back home in New York. Oops.



I arrived in Birmingham early Tuesday afternoon. My brother and I met up with two of his friends to check out the Wine Loft, a new winebar that had just opened its second location at the Summit. We drove around for about ten minutes before realizing the address was an abandoned building - it had already gone out of business. We headed south on 280 to the nearby Grey Bar, a relatively cozy spot considering it's part of a small strip of stores. Fireplaces filled with big dripping candles surrounded by comfy couches make this a nice date spot, aside from the fact the two times I have been to this spot, it has been all but empty. The first time I came to Grey Bar, there was an acoustic singer performing, so this could be a good spot to check out live music in a more chill environment than a traditional music venue. I don't think the girl I saw performing is getting any recording contracts anytime soon, though, so I can't say I was disappointed at the lack of live music this evening. My brother and I decided to splurge and split a nice bottle of the Trivento Malbec; we were pleasantly surprised when we paid to discover wine bottles are half-off on Tuesday nights!

On Wednesday, my mom and I set off for a Girls Day Out. We began with manicures and pedicures followed by a delicious lunch at the very trendy FLIP Burger Boutique at the Summit. Chef Richard Blais is famous for appearing on Top Chef and Iron Chef America shows. This is definitely a unique spot to find in Birmingham, but I've found in the time I've lived in New York, Birmingham has become a little "cooler" and receptive to pricier, trendier spots like this. Moderately-priced, FLIP Burger has a very inventive menu and an unadventurous eater and drinker may not care for the different fusions available on the menu. It is unfortunate that the seating for outdoors wasn't set up - I can imagine on a beautiful spring or summer day sitting out on the balcony, which has a lovely view looking out over 280 and the southern part of Birmingham.



I started with the orange martini, which was delicious, but more in the vain of a mimosa with orange pulp in the drink, and definitely not a drink that would normally be paired with a burger. We ordered two appetizers at the urging of my FLIP connoisseur mother: sweet potato fries topped with chocolate salt (chocolate and sweet potatoes sounded a little odd, but one bite convinced me it was a brilliant match made in Tastebud Heaven) as well as the fried pickles, which I think would have been perfection without the abundance of dill on them (I am renowned for my hatred of dill). For the main course, I ordered the tuna tartare burger, which had huge chunks of tuna and was complemented with wasabi mayo, avocado, carrots, cucumbers and mango yolk. The burger was delicious, and with the martini and two appetizers, it was really too much food for one sitting. As tempting as it was to try out one of the specialty milkshakes like the "Krispy Kreme milkshake" or the "Nutella and Burnt Marshmallow milkshake," I decided I'd better save one of these crazy concoctions for the next visit!

Last night, I met a group of my best friends for dinner at Chuy's (yet another new restaurant at the Summit). It was chilly outside, but the restaurant had a covered patio with heat lamps (the heat lamps actually got a little overwhelming halfway through the meal), so we were able to enjoy the fresh outdoor air in what is technically the dead of winter. The restaurant is huge, and I'm actually not sure if there was any logical explanation for our 20 minute wait other than to give the cocktail waitress an opportunity to ply us with their holiday-themed mojitos (it had a raspberry flavor which was delicious). There was also a chips and salsa bar opposite the actual bar where guests could prepare their own chips with different salsas. Once we had been seated, we ordered classic margaritas, which also didn't disappoint. The Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom enchiladas appear to be the most popular item on the menu, and almost all of us ordered that dish. The food was nothing remarkable, just a solid Mexican meal.

My time in Birmingham is coming to a close, and it is now time for the other half of my holiday travels - we leave for New Orleans tomorrow morning!

Miles Traveled Today: 962
Total Miles Traveled: 7,221

Sweet Home Ala...New Orleans

With Christmas falling on a Saturday this year, my vacation time from work is not as long as it usually is, but I definitely want to make the most of the time I have! For the time I am in Birmingham, my goal is to see as many "long lost friends" as possible and try out some new restaurants I've been hearing about.

The day after Christmas, my family has planned an Amtrak trip to New Orleans for three days. I've been to New Orleans two times previously, and I have to confess it's not been one of my favorite places. It is always sticky and humid, and I can never shake the feeling that the city is overcrowded, dirty, and has the stench of stale beer and urine around every corner. Despite that, I am excited for this trip firstly because of our mode of transportation - my parents have taken the train several times now and rave about it, so I'm eager to check it out myself - and two, we have some fun things planned while we will be in New Orleans that I have not had the opportunity to do on my previous trips: a trip to the National WWII Museum, the Haunted History Tour and a reservation for dinner at Emeril Lagasse's NOLA restaurant.

My flights (both direct from LaGuardia to Birmingham with regular departure and arrival times, no less - it's a miracle!) are set thanks to Travelocity.com. My winter coat has been stuffed away in my New York closet. There's a huge winter storm being forecast for next weekend. I am definitely ready to be back in the Deep South for almost two weeks!

I am only going to document the days where I'm actually doing things, so although this trip was 13 days long, there won't be that many entries. Unless you want to hear my reviews of the movies I watched on TV in my pajamas, in which case I suppose I could make a new entry for each day. But I won't.