03. New Orleans

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

I only had a few hours of driving before I got to New Orleans, and my goal was to get there by lunchtime to meet up with my friend Tammy. I got to New Orleans without issue and was able to check into my hotel quite early, which means I was able to park my car and leave it for the next 5 days - and now I could have some drinks for lunch and in the afternoon! We met up at the Royal House Oyster Bar....but didn't get oysters :-( I got a sampler of classic New Orleans dishes.

 

After that I went back and unpacked and rested a while. It was Tammy's birthday, so later in the afternoon a group would be heading out on a celebratory pub crawl. We started off at Beachbum Berry's Latitude 29 - home to my favorite drink ever, the Nui Nui. After we have enough strong tiki drinks there, the group migrated all the way around the corner to Tiki Tolteca for more strong tiki drinks. Wisely, the increasingly raucous group decided it was time for food and meandered to Orleans Grapevine for dinner. Being from Wisconsin, of course the cheeseboard appetizer interested me - but they make you choose between the house specialty cheeseboard or the chef's selections cheeseboard. Or because I'm from Wisconsin, I simply didn't choose between them and ALL THE CHEESES. I don't think anyone was disappointed we did that. After that I got the catch of the day - a snapper almandine. Yum!

I'm also realizing that maybe I should take pictures of things other than food and drinks - we shall see, kind reader, if you're so lucky ;-)

After that we decided it was time for more drinks, so we headed to Johnny White's Hole in the Wall. As the name implies, it's basically a hole in the wall dive bar, which makes it very comforting for a Wisconsinite. This also seems to be a watering hole for many of my friends, so I spent the evening reconnecting with parrotheads from all over until it was eventually time to turn in.