The first thing you want when you wake up in the French Quarter is beer beignets! The four of us decided it would be a great idea to head down to Cafe Du Monde in The French Market. This was at 9:30am on Saturday morning. We took our first of approximately 50 trips to Decatur Street and Jackson Square. Silly us for this idea.....the line was huge at both the take-out window and sit-down location. We quickly programmed the closest location of Cafe Beignet into our phones and walked up and over to the Rue Royal location.
Found this picture Cafe Beignet online. Now picture that open space filled with people waiting in line to order. The Cafe was a little larger than a train car cramped with tables and baked good display counter. There was outdoor seating, but the temps were still in the low 40's. Dave squatted an outside table while the rest of the crew stayed warm inside and ordered the food. When they came outside, Dave went in to scope out a warmer location. He finally got a table that was the size of a pizza pie tray. Very difficult for four folks to navigate consuming sandwiches, beignets, and drinks.
After breakfast we walked back to the hotel so we could drive to the Race Expo at the Convention Center. The drive took us through the business district and it was actually nicer than we pictured. We scored cheap street parking next to the Convention Center, but unfortunately it was on the wrong end of the large complex. This day was supposed to be a light walking day...... It took at least ten minutes to traverse the Convention Center to get to the Expo auditorium. Once we finished at the Expo we hoofed it back to the car and went back to our hotel.
Time to find some lunch. We were looking for plain food not too far from the hotel. Thanks to Yelp! we came across Yo Mama's across the street from Pat O'Briens. The place was a two-floor basic bar with some interesting wall hangings here-and-there. Overall pretty dank. The food was good - we had burgers and chicken sandwiches. The bartender was friendly and enjoyed discovering we were all Disney fans.
Wanting to keep off-our-feet we decided to take a streetcar ride. For $1.25 one way you can get a really long tour of the grand houses, parks, colleges, and neighborhoods of the city. Unfortunately we shared the ride with a selfie-crazed bachelorette party. We went pretty far out on the St. Charles Line. Our plan was to try to find a bar/restaurant for a drink and potty break before turning around. Trying to do this on Yelp! while moving proved difficult. Fortunately some locals overheard us and guided us to our next location (and gave us their all day ride tickets).
We got off at the turn up Carrollton Ave. and took a short walk to Cooter Brown's. From the outside it was a bit intimidating: no windows, iron gate on the door, a bunch of bikers outside. Inside was a bit better. There was a big bar, lots of beer choices on tap and bottles, a busy food window, and a lot of communal tables. We hung at the back bar called The Snooty Cooter - 34 craft beers on tap and more than 4 were dark beers. On the wall they had great wood carvings of celebrities holding beer bottles. Check out their website for some more examples. This was a great recommendation.
By the time we made the return trip back to The Quarter and walked to our hotel it was almost time for dinner. Since we had to keep our walking light today we booked dinner at a restaurant the farthest we could possibly go and still be in The Quarter: Louisiana Pizza Kitchen.
LPK was small, and
very popular, so it was a good thing we reserved a spot with Open Table. We chose pizza and pasta entrees. Dave went with the Jerk Shrimp pizza. Overall this was a pretty good choice.
On our way back we were stopped at the corner of Toulouse and Rue Royal by a wedding parade. It seems to be a French Quarter thing for an entire wedding to march down the streets of The Quarter waving napkins. Our pictures didn't turn out too well so here are some samples from Google Images.
Unfortunately that was the end of the evening since some of us were here to run a marathon. Don't worry....we made up for it on Sunday.
Here's a short and minimally produced video from our Streetcar ride.
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