New Orleans (Part II)

On the second day, B and I went inside the St. Louis Cathedral in the French quarter.

There was beautiful organ music playing inside the cathedral.

 
There were many interesting voodoo shops and souvenir shops in the French quarter. It was nice strolling through the area during the day when there was less drunken debauchery. Some bars still blasted music and reeked of beer when we passed by though. Guess it's never too early to drink.

 Mardi Gras was the week after we left, but there were some Mardi Gras decorations up.

 Some random street performers in the French quarter.


We explored a little further away from the French quarter. Here was one of the big streets downtown.

We took a bus to visit the street that supposedly had a lot of big mansions. There were some really huge houses with beautiful columns.
Not the best picture, but you get the idea:

 I can't remember when we went to the Preservation Hall, but we went one night to see a jazz performance. It wasn't very expensive, but on Yelp people said that there's usually a long wait (about an hour) just to get in. We were really lucky that night and didn't have to wait at all. It might have been because of the rain and it was a weekday. It was a great performance- the performance place was upstairs in a small but cozy room. I snapped a quick picture before realizing that photography was not allowed. Still kept the picture though:

I highly recommend seeing a jazz performance at Preservation Hall! 
Pat O'Brien- the bar next door to Preservation Hall. Very spacious bar- we tried the Hurricane, which was another popular NOLA drink that our host recommended. Not worth it though, in my opinion. It was very sour and nothing too special, but it was definitely very strong! We watched a live pianist perform in one of the rooms. There was also a spacious outdoor seating area.

Voodoo shops in the French Quarter were very eccentric. I wonder if people actually buy the stuff.. A lot of things looked hand-made and they claimed to have special powers or some sort of magic (ie. special beads, perfumes, trinkets..). The people who worked there were dressed very goth.

 We had dinner with our host that night at the French quarter at the Gumbo shop, where we had Jambalaya (rice dish with tomato and spices), gumbo, and gator sausage (quite good! better than the gator cheesecake we had the day before). After that, we went to the carousel bar in a hotel. People sat at the carousel drinking, which moved very slowly.
We also stopped in a bar and bought the Hand Grenade afterwards, which is another popular NOLA alcoholic drink. It tasted like a really sweet green apple jolly rancher. I personally didn't like it very much because it was too sweet and sour (it also didn't mix well with the bourbon drink I had before). Beware!

Ahh...not a fan of the Hand Grenade.

Our host had work early the next morning, so we parted ways with her and went to the Spotted Cat bar, which had good reviews on Yelp. There was a live jazz band and people danced as they played. It was very lively and fun. There was also a piano in the bathroom, which I completely missed because the Hand Grenade didn't mix well with the other things I drank that night..Let's keep it at that.

Still a very fun night- we stopped and listened to some street performers and bought some hand-drawn postcards that some people were selling. The night was young, lively, jazzy and drunk.

On our last day, we walked around the French Market and ate a scrumptious and flavorful muffuletta (Italian sandwich- so worth a try!).

We got our last beignet and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde and left for the airport to go to New York.
One day it would be nice to visit NOLA during Mardi Gras. NOLA was a very interesting city. Very jazzy, drunk, swampy, and flavorful!