Lisa & Bud Gould's Travel Blog

We arived in New Orleans around 1:30 PM. Our room was not going to be ready until 4 PM, so we had our luggage stored and turned the Odyssey over to the valet parking folks. The hotel is just aout smack dab in the middle of the French Quarter. We walked a block and a half to Bourbon Street and looked around for a place to eat. Had some very nice gumbo, jambalaya, and half po-boys for lunch. We stopped in several shops looking for Saints Super Bowl Champ t-shirts for Justin (at Linda's request). Lisa finally found one. Then wandered around some more until about 3 PM. By then, we were down on the ole Mississippi River and there were horse drawn (actually mules) carriages. We decided to take the French Quarter tour. It turned out to be a very nice tour.

Now, as the whole world apparently knows, the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bown last Sunday. Today at 5 PM, there was to be a parade to celebrate that event. So, after checking into out room a little after 4 PM, we decided to walk the six blocks to Canal Street and watch the parade. We got there about a few minutes after 5 PM and were about three deep behind people from the police barrier right in the middle of Canal St where the parade had to make a right angle turn. Between 5 and 6 there was very little activity except for fire and police vehicles up and down the route. There must have been the whole city out to watch this parade. Unblieveable amounts of wall to wall people. Most of them were drinking something, either beer or mixed drinks in vase looking vesles. Still not much parade activity by 7, but most of the people around us had to leave for bladder relief, so we ended up right at the police barriers. After hundreds of police motocycles, dozens of mobile command post, fire and rescue vehicles, mounted police, and other unmarked cars, we finally had the Marine Corps band go by, thet were very sharp. Most of the rest was just bunches of rag-tag groups except for the Budwiser Clydesdales. Very impressive horses and the were stalled right in front of us for about 20 minutes. Shortly after that the Saints team came by and the crowd went completly wild. It was almost 8 PM before we could push our way thru the crowd and head back towards the hotel. Quite an experience, but, I don't think we would have done it if we knew we were going to be standing in a crown of 10s of thousands people for three hours!

We are staying here tomorrow and tomorrow night. Don't know what we are going to do tomorrow as we are both worn out from all the walking and standing today.

On Thursday morning we head for Dayton, with a probable stop in Madison, AL, to visit bob and Gigi if we can arrange it. I looked at the weather along that route for Thursday and Friday and think it will be cold without any rain or snow. We should get home Fri night or sometime Sat. We plan on a stop in Mason to see how Linda is doing.

Left San Antonio about 9 AM on Monday and got to the Lake Charles, LA, area about 3 PM. Looked around and found a great seafood place - Pat's of Henderson - here in the eastern part of Lake Charles. Lisa had crawfish stew and I had a shrimp and crawfish Po-boy. Both were very good. Then we found a Comfort Suites and got a master suite using some of our points. Very nice room with hot tub and all. Had a minor problem getting connected to the Internet, but, all is well now. Still heading for New Orleans, but may do some local sightseeing on the way.