Walking in New Orelans - Part 4

(Catch up on Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 here)

The morning after Holly and Stan ran the New Orleans Marathon we started walking down Toulouse toward Decatur (again). We wanted breakfast and figured Monday's lines at Cafe Du Monde would be shorter than a weekend's line. This was true, but our group wanted more of a real breakfast vs just fried dough. After huddling up around Yelp! and adding a pedicab driver into our mix, we determined breakfast would be had a block away at Stanley. We didn't know this until now but many publications rave about their breakfasts. We all agreed it would be a great way to start the day. 

 While at Stanley we started a partial plan of the day. We had no idea our walking map would end up looking something like this:

We walked-off the huge breakfast by heading over to The French Market. This is an open-air pavilion that houses a food court of-sorts (think South Street Seaport or The Reading Market) and a flea market. You can pick up Cajun food items, hand-crafts, t-shirts, CDs, sunglasses, and other assorted junk. Dave was kept at-bay from buying the Pakistani stone cups (looked great for Tequila).

Once we finished touring the market we figured we could finally tour Lafitte's properly. Let's face it, this was really an excuse to get a beer before noon. We took Rue Royal over before crossing up to Bourbon. We took our time to take-in the decent weather and classic French Quarter architecture. Many of the residents were gearing up for Mardi Gras by decorating in similar fashion as one would do for Christmas.

Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop is dank. It was built in 1722 and is believed to be the oldest building hosting a bar in America. At 11:30 in the morning it was bright enough to be able to take in the history and the decor of the building.

After finishing our drinks (again, we forgot about to-go options) we went down a block to continue our tour of Rue Royal. After a few blocks we headed back down to Decatur and into Cafe Du Monde for coffees and beignets. These were hands-down better than Cafe Beignet.

After the snack we toured the Jackson Square area and St. Louis Cathedral before continuing our Rue Royal trek. We stepped into a couple of galleries and souvenir shops along the way. One of the cooler locations we stopped in was Cohen Antiques: home of antique maps, currency, and weapons. A lot of history in that store.

Time to eat again. We headed to our 2pm reservation at Nola, an Emeril LaGasse restaurant in The Quarter. Holly and Dave ate here 17 years ago and came away with great memories. Today it is still just as good. Three of us had the BBQ Shrimp and grits and the other salmon. That is bacon with the shrimp.....it's getting a big picture.

A familiar activity this trip was walking off our meal. We headed down to Decatur to see what that part of the street looked like. As we got closer to downtown the feel of The Quarter was shifting to a city feel. We turned up one of the streets so we could see the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone. The intention was to have a drink at the revolving bar, but all the seats were full. We admired from afar and left the building (after using their very nice restrooms) to wrap up the Rue Royal tour. One of our final stops was Bevolo: makers of fine hand-crafted brass lamps. We got to tour the showroom and talk with the craftsmen. The conversation centered around food.

It had been at least an hour since we consumed anything so it was time to grab a beer. We walked down Toulouse and headed towards Crescent City Brewhouse. In the timeline of the craft beer movement CCB was on the scene very early. They had the formula of an early brewpub: Nice food and a few beers made in-house. Nothing experimental or on-trend. They may have had the same offerings when we were last there 17 years ago.

We headed over to Pat O'Brien's for a final few rounds of hurricanes. The weather wasn't horrid so we spent our time in the patio section (but still under heat lamps). Since we hadn't eaten for at least 180 minutes (except for free bags of popcorn at Pat's) we formulated a dinner plan. Not too far away was The Gumbo Shop. We were entertained by Jerome, a very pleasant waiter, and treated to an excellent meal of varying gumbos and BBQ shrimp. After the meal we were served a killer bread pudding.

We walked back to the hotel and spent a final few moments together in the hotel bar. Stan and Pam were leaving very early in the morning while we had an early evening flight out the next day. After parting ways Holly and Dave crossed the street to Tropical Isle for some live music. At first we started listening to the rock band, but then moved to the next room for the Cajun band. It really was nice to be in The Quarter where music was ever-present between the bars and high-caliber street performers.

We spent the next morning lazily packing, watching TV, and having some bench time in Jackson Square. We had a short walk to our brunch location: The Court of Two Sisters. Brunch is a buffet served in the courtyard while a jazz trio plays. Very pleasant location but the food needed a little help. The buffet area where you got your food was dated beyond being quaint. The actual inside of the building had layers of throwback all over the place.  We had some time to kill before we had to leave town so we stopped in for a final sampling of southern beers at Chartes House. This was a place that we would always pass on the way to another location and we'd say something like "that looks like a cool little place for a beer". All the windows slid open to give it an open-air feel and with temperatures near 70 that day it was a perfect way to say goodbye to New Orleans.

Walking in New Orleans - Part 1

We've recently returned from a few days in New Orleans. Holly and our friend Stan ran the Rock and Roll New Orleans Marathon while Dave and Pam (Stan's wife) went on another Race Chase adventure. We spent most of our time in New Orleans touring the French Quarter.

Accommodations: We stayed at the Four Points Sheraton French Quarter, which was on the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse (aka Party Central). Upon arrival we realized we were the oldest guests by decades and likely the only guests with less than 7 people sharing a room. We imagined revelers would be disturbing our sleep before marathon morning. Surprisingly the rooms were very quiet (we booked courtyard view vs. street view rooms). Fun fact: The hotel was the first opera house ever in America, built in 1859. The Four Points had a restaurant and a bar with cheap drink prices. The location worked out very well for us and we'd stay there again.

Friday

We were all checked-in by 6:30 and ventured out onto Bourbon Street. We decided we needed food sooner-than-later and browsed menus along the way. Not finding anything of interest we ducked into the courtyard bar of Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop to formulate a plan. The bartender suggested that if we were looking for cajun food we should go to Coop's Place. We checked the menu on our phone and decided we should make the several block trip. We poured our beers in to-go cups (a NOLA perk we didn't take advantage of enough) and headed to Decatur.

Coop's had a line out the door. Being impatient folks, we opted to backtrack a block or so to The French Market Restaurant. The location has been an eating establishment since way before the Jackson Administration and specialized in oysters and seafood boils. We had some excellent food including shrimp and grits, gumbo, and pasta jambalaya. Dave had his first new beer of the trip: Andy Gator from Abita.

We decided to pop into Margaritaville since we were so close. We walked into the bar section that had a country guitarist playing to one patron. Bicycle Jones was playing a heavy set of Garth Brooks (thanks Stan for cluing us in) that was actually very pleasant. We enjoyed his voice and his between-song banter. Drinks were cheap for nighttime happy hour so we stayed for two rounds and enjoyed the quality entertainment.

We could not let the night end without a visit to Pat O'Briens. It's the famous bar that serves many hurricanes. The line for the piano bar was out the door (and out the door to the street) so we opted for the chilly patio. We switched tables a few times during the evening to try to keep warm via heat lamps. We all got Hurricanes and spent the rest of the evening talking, catching up, and trying to keep warm.

Just a comment on the temperature: All four of us live in Illinois. If we were at home the 45 degrees would not be a big deal. However, low temperatures in the south always chill us. We hypothesize it's the moister air.

We left Pat O'Brien's late (for us) and took the short walk back to the hotel. 

2015 Rock and Roll New Orleans Marathon Race Report and Video

Here's Holly's 2015 Rock and Roll New Orleans Marathon Report. Dave's comments and the video are included at the end.

This was definitely a must do for Dave (no, he didn't run the race). I pick most of the races but Dave has wanted to go back to New Orleans for years so this was an easy choice. We were lucky enough that our good friends Pam and Stan would be joining us for the race and for a long weekend of fun. Dave will cover the fun long weekend part (in upcoming posts - keep en eye out for them) but I’ll cover the race.

We made it to the expo on Saturday morning and it was a typical big Rock and Roll Expo. We picked up the ugliest race shirt I have ever seen. We did a quick lap around the expo and then headed out.

Race morning started with me meeting Stan in the lobby and him telling me he wasn’t feeling well. Uh oh. This could be interesting. We walked over to the start from our French Quarter hotel and barely dodged the Bourbon Street bleach cleaning crew on the way. They don’t stop for nothing! The start area was crowded but thankfully they had plenty of port-o-potties. We eventually started about 25 minutes after the official start by the time our corral made it to the start line.

We started out fast because we were cold and needed to warm up. It was a nice course out to the garden district. We followed the St. Charles street car line to Audubon Park and then turned around to run back. Stan took a pit stop here but I didn’t wait as I can’t stand still for too long or my legs really feel it. I told him I would stay on the left and slow down the pace. Unfortunately he had a long line and it still took him 2 miles to catch me. Sorry Stan!

We now headed back into the French Quarter and Dave and Pam were right in front of Jackson Square. Great Photo Op! Thanks to both of you. After the quarter it’s a long stretch until the half marathoners split off from us and hit the finish and we head further away towards Lake Pontchartrain. I was feeling ok and Stan was doing better as well. We saw Pam and Stan again and they had some snacks for us. We also had a beer stop right around the halfway point. Thanks to those nice people!

I ran into Larry Macon around mile 15. Larry is amazing. He has run over 1400 marathons and is always happy and willing to stop for a picture (the last time we saw Larry was in Oregon).

Right after seeing Larry my ITB started acting up. I thought I was done with this issue but apparently not. I took some Tylenol and put some Icy Hot on it when we saw Dave and Pam again around Mile 17. This helped a bit.

When we got to the lake it was a very long out and back. The back portion was into the wind and it was pure suckage! Lots of colorful words were coming out of Stan and mine’s mouths. We finally made it back to see Dave and Pam for one more snack and another round of icy hot. Around Mile 23 the ITB really started hurting so we had to walk a ton. I was pretty mad because I wasn’t really tired and I know we could have finished faster. But we did finish! It was great to get to the finish line and get our medal and a really nice Brooks Finisher jacket. I had a great time with Stan and am thankful that he and Pam made the trip!

Dave's Comments

I set a new record this race: Number of times going the wrong way down a one-way street during a race: 3. Oopsies! The part I was most neurotic about was making it from mile 4 back to 9.5 so we could be at Jackson Square. We figured everyone would want to spectate from this location. To our surprise we walked right up. We had time to grab hot beverages from a French Market style cafe and spent time taking pictures of the area. Pam and I found a great spot between 13 and 14, but we were in a world-of-hurt after that. As we tried to navigate up to 15.5 we ran into very narrow streets with no parking. I let Pam out while I tried to get a space but in all that fun we had just missed our runners. They were going at a good clip so we skipped forward 2 planned areas and just made it to see them at 17.5. We then sped off and hugged the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to barely just make mile 18.5. We hung out there for the comeback at mile 22 and then made it to the finish in plenty of time.

For the spectator the race course gave a great tour (at least the route I drove). We got to see the Garden District (and the uglier backside of the Garden District), French Quarter, the Business District, the Canal Street trolley, a large concentration of New Orleans above-ground cemeteries, nice parks, and Lake Pontchartrain. We made it to Mile 1, 4, 9.5, 13.5 twice, 17.5, 18.5, 22, and the finish.

Snacks consisted of apples, Kind Bars, and chips we bought at Walgreen's.

We'll recap all the non-race fun in future posts. Here's the video: