Category: Things To See

The tour guide dropped us off at the French Market. We strolled through the stalls and got some t-shirts and beads. Mike found a ring. It was busy. Great place to people watch. Not really our kind of shopping.

We also visited shops in the area and picked-up some Aunt Sally’s pralines….salted caramel pralines are amazing. Mike got more socks. The fact that we had to carry stuff makes us want to limit what we buy. The streets are packed and we were going to have to ride home on the bus or streetcar.

French Market Corporation Administrative Office
1008 N. Peters Street
New Orleans, LA 70116

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With Mary joining us, we decided to take a city tour. She has never been to NOLA and we were running out of places to visit. We wanted to get a highlight of places besides the French Quarter and normal tourist attractions. We plan to spend some time revisiting places we found interesting.

After watching the hoards of people getting off tour buses, we decided to splurge and hire a private tour guide to show us the city. We told him what we had already visited and that we were interested in history and architecture.

The guide picked us up from our Airbnb and gave us a very interesting tour including the history of New Orleans and it’s people, showing us the architecture in different neighborhoods, and facts about life in New Orleans.

We started with a great view from the Westin Hotel

We next went to St Louis Cemetary

We went to Lake Ponchartrain

When we were done, Glen dropped us off at the French Quarter so we could walk around and shop with Mary.

Longue Vue offers both tours of the home and gardens. We used our Fort Worth Botanical Garden pass to get in at no charge. We will need to use our Kimball Art Museum to tour the house on another day. This place was magical. I cannot imagine what this place looks like in full bloom. It backs up to a country club. So peaceful next to a highway. We needed to use a plant identification app to figure out what we were seeing. The camellias are getting ready to bloom. We will try again next week to see them.

Longue Vue Home & Gardens
7 Bamboo Rd.
New Orleans, LA 70124

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A nice stroll the sculpture garden attached to the New Orleans Museum of Art. It is free to the public and is open 10 to 5. They have 90 sculptures in a park like setting with lots of water features. Some were very strange. It was a nice mix of classical and modern art with a large variety of artists.

Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
New Orleans Museum of Art
One Collins C. Diboll Circle, City Park
New Orleans, Louisiana 70124

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One of Mike’s musts for the trip was visiting the National World War II Museum. It is an ever changing, ever expanding museum. We have both gone before…but it looked nothing like what we saw today. We actually became members for a year so we can visit it multiple times. It is a bit overwhelming to take in all at once. We even have a bonus three months to visit.

Upon entering, you are given a “dog tag” card to scan as you board a train car simulator. It is the name of a solder or support person that you can follow during your visit and see what the experienced during the war. I was assigned a man from Athens, TX.

We also paid to watch a 4D movie that was very moving.

We were there for hours and only went through one building, watched the movie and had lunch. We will return next week for another visit.

The National WWII Museum
945 Magazine St
New Orleans, LA 70130

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We headed over to the City Park this morning for a visit to the weekly Farmer’s Market. We saw a lot of the some people from last week. This week we bought butter from Buttery Spell. We grabbed a pumpkin honey butter, Made in NOLA and Cajun seasoned butter. They go next week to pitch to Walmart to have their butters carried in store.

We got a loaf of bread and a bouquet of flowers, too.

On the way back Mike stopped to rest by a huge oak tree

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We strolled over to City Park to visit the monthly Arts Market on City Park’s great lawn. It is hosted on the second Saturday of the month by Arts New Orleans. It had around thirty booths that had ceramics, photographs, paintings, jewelry, plants, soaps and candles.

We bought two prints, a photograph, a magnet and a pair of earrings.

The Astronomy Club of New Orleans also had telescopes and glasses to view the eclipse. The largest percentage of the eclipse in NOLA was at 12:07 PM. It was about 80 % coverage.

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We used our Kimball Art Museum pass again to get into the museum at no charge. The museum is housed in the old New Orleans US Mint building. They have two exhibits. One is for jazz and one is for the mint. Mike and I thought the mint side was more interesting.

Half of the jazz side was taken up by a gallery of portraits taken at Chazfests through the years. We didn’t know most of the people. Chazfest is named for Washboard Chaz Leary who played a washboard with a bell and tin cans. One of his washboards was in the other half of the jazz museum which covered how drumming from New Orleans helped shape jazz.

New Orleans Jazz Museum
400 Esplanade Ave. 
New Orleans, LA 70116.

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After the church, we walked next door to The Cabildo. We use our Kimball Art Museum pass to get in for no cost. The museum focusses on the city of New Orleans and its history. It was a little smaller that I thought but was still very interesting.

The focal point of Jackson Square is the St. Louis Cathedral. There has been a church on this site since 1718. It is also the oldest continuously used cathedral in the US. There is a weekday Mass at 12:05PM.

Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Louis King of France
615 Pere Antoine Alley 
New Orleans, LA 70116-3291

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