New Orleans!

We made it to our first stop, New Orleans, with enough time to relax before heading out for dinner. Our hotel was only 3 blocks to Decatur St and Jackson Square. After walking past the same restaurants 3 times and being harassed by a homeless man who told Daniel he accepted plastic because we didn't have cash, we picked a place. It was good, no one was in there, and from our last trip I remember that was a bad sign. However, it was a Monday night, in December with near record low temps so no one was out eating. Our waitress sat at the table next to us and talked to us about our trip and New Orleans. We had red beans and rice with sausage, gumbo, clam chowder and gulf shrimp alfredo. We stuffed ourselves to the point where it was difficult to walk back to the hotel, but I had to stop at another place and get a bread pudding to go.
Our room was so warm, but then it was too warm and uncomfortable. The heater made this terrible banging noise and we had no way to turn it off. Other than that it was a really nice place.

New Orleans was very pretty, decorated for Christmas...



We got up really early this morning and walked to cafe du monde. Daniel mispronounced cafe au lait and I felt like everyone rolled their eyes at us. We walked to the river and sat for a few minutes.

Cafe Du Monde!!



Ordering at cafe du monde ( and not knowing someone was taking a picture)



Jackson Square



Drinking a cafe au lait by the Mississippi river

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Then back to the hotel, packed up and hit the road by 8. We will meet up with daniel's moms cousins son Alex who lives in Austin. Today's drive is about 8.5 hours, so I'm sure there will be more stories to come.