FRENCH QUARTER

We started out our trip by going to the French Quarter on Saturday morning. We followed directions to get to the tour place but it wasn't exactly where the map said so we ended up accidentally getting onto a ferry. Once we were on the little road there was no way we could turn or u-turn so Tammy rolled down her window and told them we didn't mean to get on the ferry and (after giving us strange looks--has nobody else ever done that??) they told us go around the ferry and then off. Luckily nobody else was on the ferry yet so it was super easy to get off. While searching for parking (which was a small fortune) Tammy hit a curb which just made us laugh (we did get some funny looks from people walking around though). I think we had more laughs driving around then any other part of our trip. Haha.

We went to the tour place but they said the tour we asked about was cancelled since not enough people signed up so... we decided to give ourselves a tour! How hard could it be? We walked around looking at all the amazing buildings and shops. We didn't learn any historical stuff but we got to take our time and go where we wanted (plus we saved over $20 that we got to spent on souvenirs instead).

Oh, and the humidity was horrible all weekend! We were sweating like crazy! So... if our skin is all shiny that is why. :)

Here are a few things that we saw:

We started out on the Mississippi River next to the Steamboat Natchez which you can only partially see in our pictures. 

There were people displaying/selling their art along the street...

We stopped to see the St. Lois Cathedral. They were doing an ordination inside so we could only go into the entry way.

There was a small park area in front of the Cathedral that had this statue. I'm sure it's something cool but I can't remember. :)

We walked by this fancy hotel and the Door Man saw my camera and said "Are you taking pictures? You HAVE TO see the view from the roof of the hotel. There's NOTHING like it! Best view in the city!" He led us into the hotel where he gave us 2 room keys that would get us to the roof. We took the elevator up to the roof where there was a pool area and then there was another set of stairs that took us even higher up to a small area where you could look out and see the whole area. It was pretty amazing and even had a telescope thing. I'm not sure what about my camera caught this guys eye (it seems like everyone has one nowadays) but we were so glad! It was so cool to see the whole city from up there!

A few views of the city:

St. Lois Cathedral from the roof:

Here I am with the Mississippi behind me:

 I know... I looked so cool in my running shoes! The hight of fashion!

(my feed did NOT hurt at the end of each day though!)

Looking out at all the sights:

Tammy took this:

(it's pretty much the only view she saw of me the whole weekend)

Tammy in front of the Mississippi:

Tammy looking out over the city:

The famous "Court of Two Sisters"

(and since we were 2 sisters... we had to take a picture!)

There were so many cool shops on:

One shop we found had this cool frog fountain in it. Tammy decided to try to kiss the frog and see if she'd get a prince out of the deal...

It didn't work :( and since I knew there was no prince and didn't need one anyways (since I have the perfect prince already) I decided to give the frog a little kiss anyways...

We also found a ton of shops that had Mardi Gras masks. This shop was amazing and had some pretty cool ones. We took a few pictures of them (don't worry we bought stuff too).

We HAD to go down:

since it's so famous! This is where all the excitement is for Mardi Gras after all! There were tons of bars and some crazy stuff down this street plus it REEKED of stale alcohol (yuck!). It was fun to walk around though and now we can say we've been there! :)

While walking around we saw some carriages being driven by horses giving tours of the city:

and we saw some people playing some jazz on the streets. This was a family playing together and we thought it was pretty cool!

There were some AMAZING buildings in New Orleans! I mostly loved the houses but here are some of the cool buildings they had. I especially loved the wrought iron balconies. They were so detailed and beautiful! Some peoples balconies were pretty cool.

Most buildings were up high (in case of flooding)

so you had to walk up steps to get inside: