New Orleans and Tulane

We spent a few days in New Orleans with the boys. Our main reason for going was to visit Tulane with the WWII Museum coming in a very close second. Knowing our itinerary and her absolute boredom at looking at war museums, Ellie opted to stay home with her grandparents and had a lovely time!

We flew into NOLA late Wednesday night, arriving at our hotel, the JW Marriott, after midnight our time but it was worth it to wake up and be able to start our adventures on Thursday!

We walked to Cafe du Monde for our beignets and to see a little bit of the city.

Of course, we needed a picture of our Mr B in front of Mr B's Bistro :)

We walked to the WWII museum, arriving for our 10:30 reservation time and spent the rest of the day wandering, reading and taking in all of the exhibits. We did take a break to go to a pizza place around the corner before coming back to continue our exploring. We probably could have spent a second day taking it all in. This is a great museum loaded with so much information in very well done exhibits. All 4 of us truly enjoyed our time here and learned so much.

We spent a little time in the hotel pool before getting ready for dinner at the classic Palace Cafe where we all tried the famous NOLA gumbo and their bananas foster.

The view from our hotel at sunset. We didn't take part in the late night festivities NOLA is known for. We are more of the early morning explorers.

We took an Uber to Tulane on Friday morning for our scheduled tour. We had an engaging and well-informed student guide, Kennedy who really sold Tulane to DuBose. 

They have one of the oldest NROTC programs in the country and while it wasn't open, we did stop by to check it out. DuBose could see himself spending a lot of time here.

He loved the service component to Tulane and the fact that every student typically has more than one major, often 3. Their structure makes this easy to do and he was intrigued by not being tied to one particular major when so many things interest him.

A beautiful school and he placed it high on his list of possibilities.

After we left Tulane, we took the street car back toward the French Quarter. We got off at about the halfway mark in the Garden District and walked around a bit. We were hoping to see the Lafayette Cemeteries but everything was closed due to Covid so we took a look through the gate and continued on our way to find some lunch. We ended up being the only customers in a Greek restaurant after checking in with the most popular restaurant with a 45 minute wait. The air condition felt great and the food was good so a win.

We saw the red double decker tour buses going by while we ate and decided to get on one so that was our next activity. This tour takes you on a complete loop of the entire city so we were able to show it all to DuBose from the top of this bus with its trying-to-be funny tour guide. He did have a few good jokes but since it was a hop on and off bus, he told the same jokes over and over again thinking he had a new audience at every stop. We used it to take the full loop so we heard them quite a few times.

Oh and it POURED! 

They passed out ponchos and we were able to sit under the cover but still got a little wet. 

Always an adventure!

We finished our day with another classic NOLA dinner - Dickie Brennan's. It IS a good steak dinner!

After dinner, we walked about a block through the Quarter before the boys became uncomfortable with the level of crowds, intoxication and smell of drugs and wanted to escape. This was about 9 o'clock - I can only imagine what they would think of the late night shenanigans. HA!

I have to say that the fact that NOLA is known for its party scene is one drawback for DuBose. It helped him to see how separate Tulane was from this scene and he would only have to experience it if he actually went down to the Quarter at night. 

We spent Saturday morning walking around again with a stop at Shake Shack for an early lunch before heading to the airport for our flight home.

Such a great trip! Although a bit surreal that we are taking our son on college visits but here we are! Thankfully, this one was a hit and he will apply. It would be a great place to visit him, that's for sure!