Sunday, February 4, 2018

Beignets and Krampusnacht

New Orleans, round two.

Here are the numbers:
1 - nights stayed in New Orleans
2 - hours drive from Mobile to NOLA
2 - Second annual Beignet fest.. essentially just an excuse to eat beignets and listen to music.
3 - Neighborhoods visited (maybe more like 4 or 5, actually), including Bywater, the Garden District, Central Business District, Audubon, City Park, and everywhere in between that our Uber Lyft or St. Charles trolley path took us.
2 - delicious restaurants eaten at: Ethiopian and Costa Rican, both on Magazine Street
3 - cool bars visited: Parleaux Beer Lab (microbrewery), Bar Redux, Circle Bar
1 - first annual Krampus fest
2 - universities next to each other visited in the Garden District (Tulane and Loyola)
1 - crazy man talking to us on the St. Charles streetcar
1000 - number of fog/clouds


It was a foggy day when Evan and I arrived in New Orleans, which ended up being the perfect setting for the first annual Krampus parade in Bywater. We stayed at the Hotel Modern in Lee Square, infamous for its undercover removal of the Robert E. Lee statue this year.
Lee Square, minus Lee
We ate delicious Ethiopian food for dinner and breakfast at Surrey's cafe on Magazine Street; rode the St. Charles streetcar through the Garden District; walked around Audubon park, Tulane, and Loyola; and had a crazy man insist that we too were "other folks from Annapolis" a.k.a. FBI or something.

Audubon Park was a lovely place to walk, and we saw several bird species there, including mallards, wood ducks, coots, and whistling ducks (all pictured above). Tulane University had a nice campus; it even had a study break party in its quad with snow available to play in (the palm tree with ferns was also on campus, for contrast):


We didn't hit up the Breaux Mart; I just thought it was a funny name, especially since there were so many breauxs heading in for a beer run (or at least that's what I like to think).