Today we made it to the Big Easy. Let's start at the beginning though. Last night the kids slept in beds with us. I had Will. Steven had Kenzie. Will is a mover and a shaker in his sleep. I kept waking up with his feet in my back as he would turn around so his feet were on his pillow and he would curl up in this little ball. I kept trying to return him to a more "normal" sleeping position but he would just turn himself around again. Whatever. Kenzie apparently slept almost on top of Steven all night. Will woke up right around 6:30 and started tapping me to see if I was awake. I was... but that doesn't make it any better. We actually started making noise around 6:50 to wake Kenzie up as we knew we needed to get on the road sort of early. She tried to pretend like she wanted to sleep more but we all knew she was really ready to go. We got the kiddos dressed and went down to have breakfast. The kids finally ate a better breakfast though it took some encouraging on our part.
After breakfast we packed up and headed out. We are now in the stage of a trip when we just KNOW we are likely to leave something behind at the hotel. When it was just the two of us traveling, we didn't worry as much. With kids? Whole different ball game. We think we got everything and went down to load up the car. (At this point we are 99% sure we have everything but we did find a random truck hidden under the curtains already in the hotel we are in tonight so who knows what we may lose on the remainder of the trip if we aren't careful.) Will is ridiculously into helping to push the luggage cart. I have heard a rumor that Steven used to earn money helping push the cart but Will still works for free. (Side note: It's probably good we only have two kids because we now have an elevator system in place. Will pushes buttons when we go down and Kenzie pushes when we go up. We had to create a system or the two of them were going to start an all out war eventually over those ridiculous elevator buttons.)
We loaded up pretty easily and were on our way. Since we had to drive through Jackson sort of on our way out of town, I pulled out the Travel Bingo I found at the Dollar Store over the summer to keep everyone busy. It had to wait until we traveled in a city as something like I-10 through the panhandle would not have worked out at all for this game. We talked about making our own next time but we didn't do it this time because we didn't know if the kids would even be into it. Turns out... they LOVE it. The bonus to making our own would be having different things for some of the items on each card. For now, these worked perfectly. We gave one to the kids and Steven and I held onto the other one. We played adults vs kids. The kiddos won. (Technically we should have won, but it's all fun and games so we let them think they had it since it was their first time playing. This time. Next time we are out for blood.) When we finished Kenzie made a sticker princess in her book while Will took a little bit of a nap.
As we were getting closer to Louisiana I was making that picture up at the top with the "Day 4" on it and realized that our current route didn't take us over the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain. Um... that didn't sound good. We have been hyping that bridge for days. I remember it from when I was little, Steven thought it sounded pretty cool as he already loves the 7 Mile Bridge in the Keys, and the kids couldn't even fathom how far the bridge must go. So, we quickly started looking for re-routes to put us over the bridge. Luckily, it wasn't too hard to figure out and we were ready to go. We then crossed into Louisiana and hit our third state in as many days. We stopped at the Visitor's Center where we had a very helpful woman that worked there give us a brief overview of New Orleans (NOLA) and things we may want to check out as well as more firm directions for getting on the bridge. Will wasn't the happiest camper when we first got there as we woke him up but he cheered up in the Visitor's Center when he was able to choose another brochure. We all cracked up when he took one out and I handed it to the woman helping us to put back as we had no idea where it came from and we realized he was choosing brochures of distilleries. Yep. Definitely his father's child. Eventually he settled on one with planes and Kenzie chose one for the HOHO we planned to go on as it had a map of the route we would be taking. As we were leaving we stopped to take pictures in front of the Louisiana sign and the nice woman came out to ask if we needed a photographer. It's always nice to have photos of all of us together as that rarely happens on a trip like this. I'm not always sure who I can hand my phone or camera to safely so I don't often do it. This worked out though and we got a family photo in Louisiana.
We were back on the road after that and were able to follow the directions we were given fairly easily. Plus, Waze finally gave up on trying to send us down to I-10 on the West side of the Lake and re-routed to put us over the bridge. On the way there we hit 1,000 miles traveled on our trip! That was sort of exciting. The rental car we have also keeps a running tally of the amount of time the car has been on (which for us is mostly drive time as we haven't really sat idling for any reason) and our total time spent in the car to that point was 19 hours and 24 minutes. Pretty cool.
Finally, we made it to Lake Pontchartrain. The bridge is a toll bridge and it costs $5 to go over it. No big deal as this was a big things for the kiddos. The bridge is the longest continuous bridge over water in the world and it spans approximately 24 miles. There is a point in the middle where you cannot see land in any direction for a total of 8 miles. It was also ridiculously bumpy. So bumpy in fact that our Garmin watches were registering phantom steps for us. We were cracking up. Take a look at the video below. It looks like we blew a tire or something with all the bouncing that the dash board is doing... but it is just the bridge. The bridge was also rated as the scariest bridge in the country or something like that by CNN. I looked it up and of the accidents that occur, about half of them are from cars hitting disabled cars within 2 minutes of the disabled car stopping. There is absolutely no shoulder and very few places to turn around. There is a drawbridge at one point on the bridge and then another very high incline which I imagine was made to allow them to not have to make another drawbridge about 10 miles from the other one.
When we finally made it over the bridge (safe and sound), we almost immediately stopped for lunch at Wendy's. We knew we would get into NOLA around lunch time and we didn't want to chance not being able to find something we knew the kids would eat so it was just easier to stop. Plus, once we parked and got on the HOHO, we didn't want to deal with getting off at a random stop just to eat McDonald's or something. We ate pretty quickly and were back on the road. We ended up parking at Basin Street Station as this is the main terminal for City Sightseeing New Orleans and we wanted to use a coupon we had for tickets. You can technically get on any bus at any time and buy tickets but we wanted to make sure our coupon worked. (Tip: If you go to NOLA, you can request to have a Visitor's Guidebook mailed to you beforehand. It has coupons, tips, and other info on places to eat, stay, etc. We are using another coupon tomorrow for the paddlewheel boat we plan to take.) We ended up buying the 3 day ticket as we weren't sure if we wanted to use the HOHO tomorrow, too. There was a 1 day and a 3 day option. Kids were $10 regardless of the amount of time you purchased so it only changed by $10 for each adult ticket to have the added two days. I will say now that we probably could have gone with the 1 day as we have a game plan for tomorrow and it doesn't involve the HOHO but at the time we bought the tickets, we didn't know that yet. Next time we will have a better idea and if we do the HOHO again we will know which ticket is definitely best. Anyway, we hopped on the bus and were off!
The kids initially thought the entire thing was awesome. We sat on the top under a canopy. It was shaded but still hot. The temp today when we checked it at 5pm or so was still a feels like temp of 107. That's hot. What we did notice though is that we didn't sweat. The humidity was only 57%. My Central Florida friends know that is crazy low. We go outside in 97% humidity some days. It hits you like a ton of bricks as you step out of your house. Even though the temp is technically lower... this didn't take you breath away. So although it was ridiculously hot, Steven and I didn't feel too uncomfortable. The kids were another story. They were very hot and Kenzie has been at this age lately that everything is a complaint. Well, she loves everything... but to us she tends to complain about things too right now. So, she whined about the heat. Will was a trooper and other than asking to be carried once (which NO ONE was willing to do in the heat), he was mostly fine. He is our go with the flow kid. For now, at least. We drove around the city with plans to get off at Stop 15, St. Charles Avenue. On the way there we learned a ton of cool facts about the city. We saw a cemetery with a very large tomb that apparently was purchased by none other than Nicholas Cage to be buried in when he dies. So there's that. He paid a hefty sum, too. Over $1 million if I remember correctly. We learned that graves were not necessarily built above ground to avoid popping out of the ground (though that was one concern) but partially because it was a Catholic tradition to bury people above ground. We also learned about the phrases "saved by the bell" and " I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole" as they would tie bells to people when they buried them because they would sometimes bury people alive on accident. So if they weren't dead and started moving the bell would be heard and the person could be let out of their grave. Eek. Also they can add people to graves as the bodies decompose very quickly due to the heat so they would use long poles to push the remains into bags and shove them into a hole in the tomb to allow them to add new bodies. No one wanted to touch the decomposed bodies though as they believed it would curse them or kill them so they used 10 foot long poles to do the job. Interesting and slightly morbid facts. We went by Harrah's Casino and through the Business District. We drove by the Superdome and were nearly kicked off the bus for not being Saints fans. We did agree though that Drew Brees wasn't too shabby so we were allowed to stay. We drove by the WWII Museum. TripAdvisor ranked it as the #2 museum in the world. My cousin also highly recommended it. It has been added to our list of things to do one day when we return. We did learn that the boats that were used to storm the beaches of Normandy were wooden and painted gunmetal gray. I had no idea! We've heard the museum takes a minimum of 3 hours but it is easy to spend a full day there so we will plan for that next time, for sure. We then drove through the Lower Garden District which is full of shopping and slightly less expensive houses than the Garden District. If $1.7 million dollars on average is inexpensive. We drove by the house used in American Horror Story Coven which coincidentally is the only season of AHS I have watched so that was pretty cool. Finally, we got to our stop. The kids were ready to get off the bus. Looking back, they probably would have asked to stay on if they knew what we were about to do to them...
One thing we wanted to do was walk through Lafayette Cemetery No 1. The downfall was that due to construction, the stop closest to it was closed to traffic. So we had to get off on another stop and walk there. Did I mention that it was hot? We got off and immediately grabbed water for the kids. Then we set off. We passed a restaurant that used to be the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was removed in 1981 as it was messing with the integrity of the tower and it was shipped in pieces to NOLA where it was reassembled and made into a new restaurant. Pretty cool. We walked through some of the bigger houses in the Garden District. They were so impressive. Such pretty houses. One of my favorite things was all the beads stuck in the trees as the roads are on the Mardi Gras parade route. The kids thought the beads were quite cool, too. The kids loved the street car that went down the Garden District. We learned that it is super cheap too at about $1.20 a person to ride. Definitely another thing we have added to the list of things to do next time. The streetcar is actually the longest running railway in the country which is pretty interesting. Will and Kenzie both thought it was super cool. It was about a .7 mile walk to the cemetery. We made it... barely. The kids thought the cemetery was cool though. So did we. There were a bunch of random people that gave tours through it and you paid in tips at the end but we didn't think the kids would want to do that so we just wandered around on our own.
Eventually we decided to head back to catch a bus. We walked back to a different stop knowing that busses were supposed to be by every 30 minutes. Well, I don't know what happened but we waited at least 45 minutes in the heat before a bus showed up. And there is no telling how long it had been since a bus was there when we got there initially. That is part of the reason we don't think we will use the HOHO tomorrow (or at least not often) as we can't necessarily rely on them being 30 minutes apart. We were able to finish the full HOHO circle though from the bus stop we got on add. Ironically, we ended up on the same bus we had gotten off of so we had the same tour guide for the remainder of our tour. We sat inside on the bottom this time though as it was air conditioned.
The rest of the trip around took us by Mardi Gras World, the arts district, and the French Quarter. Tomorrow's plan involves the French Quarter so we didn't get off at any of the stops. We wouldn't have been able to get back on either as it was getting late and no more buses would likely run by so we didn't chance it as the kids were about done with the day anyway. Will was so tired that he fell asleep at some point. I didn't notice until Steven asked me about it when he saw his head fall forward. Kid can still sleep anywhere when he wants to.
We finally made it back to Basin Street Station. Kenzie checked out the gift shop as she has $20 given to her by Nana #2 she is allowed to spend on souvenirs. She didn't get anything yet but she seems pretty focused on a snow globe which we think would be an awesome souvenir. We told her we will do some shopping tomorrow. Both kids have the $20 so it will be interesting to see how they want to spend it. We then headed out of NOLA to our hotel. We chose a Hampton Inn about 20 minutes away. One because of the pricing and two because we were just more comfortable with the kids off the beaten path in NOLA. The hotel was easy enough to find and it is probably the nicest one we have stayed in yet. It rivals yesterday as this one was also recently redone. It is much larger though. My favorite part of checking in was that I was walking around looking for a luggage cart and I said something to Steven about not finding one. Kenzie didn't know what we were looking for and just said, "Oh, Mommy. I found it. The coffee is over here." This kid gets me. We got settled in our room and then decided to head out to dinner. We initially planned to choose something a bit more Louisiana authentic but eventually decided on Applebees just because we knew the kids would eat. We have plans for po'boys for lunch tomorrow though. This area actually has a really large outdoor mall a lot like Waterford or Winter Garden Village at home so there were a ton of options. Something about Applebees sounded good though. Nothing special but consistently good food that we knew the kids would be good with. Kenzie had mac and cheese and she ate almost all of it. Will had chicken tenders and was happy so we were happy. Afterwards we found a Winn Dixie for some sweet snacks. Honestly, we didn't even know Winn Dixie existed here... but it does. We came back the the hotel after that and the kids played with their toys they brought for a while before bed. Kenzie did her nightly entry into her travel journal and drew a pretty good (just basic) picture of the HOHO. The kids fell asleep pretty quickly after we turned off the movie we happened to find on TV to help them settle before bed.
While I've been writing this we received a call that the paddlewheel boat cruise we booked for tomorrow is having mechanical issues so our initial 10am cruise won't be going out. They switched us to the 2pm so we are having to rework some plans for lunch and going to the French Quarter but we are still going to have a great time. We are curious if we may get cancelled out of the paddlewheel all together should they not be able to fix the issue. We shall see. Either way, tomorrow we are going to have Po'Boys and beignets. And we will do some shopping and see some street performers (we saw two young men tap dancing today at one of the bus stops and Kenzie thought that was cool so we know they will like Jackson Square).
Until then...
Laissez le bon temps rouler!
Let the good times roll!
Day 4 - Done!
Add on random tip: Hotel cups are awesome. We have learned that they make great chip holders on the beach for kiddos. They also serve well as cheerio holders in the car or goldfish holders when we push the kids in the stroller on walks. So we take any unused ones with us. We brought the kids' camelbacks on this trip... so we have gained just a few in the last 4 days... haha!
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