Courtyards of New Orleans

Both Trudie and Mary were up, showered, and dressed way before me today (Friday). We had breakfast at Croissant d’Orr bakery on Ursuline just a couple of blocks from the hotel. We sat in their courtyard for breakfast. Fabulous bakery!

We took Royal Street to an appointment with El Monde Creole tour of Nawlins courtyards – after an early morning detour on Decatur to check out the Palm Court Jazz Club, and to buy Brendyn a hoodie shirt in a shop on Decatur.

We met our tour guide at 622 Rue Royal, and were joined by a Black couple from Atlanta for the tour. It was raining softly and continued all day. We did the courtyards of the French Quarter (this time most of them were public and not private), and learned about Creole cottages, shotgun, and double-shot gun houses, slave quarters, and kitchen placement (hint: in the courtyards behind the house per decree from the Spaniards when they ruled the French Quarter). We went to St. Louis Cemetery, to the Pharmacy Museum, and to another New Orleans museum that has rooms decorated in period style. We also wet to Little Vic’s ice cream parlor to see how his courtyard had a shrine to St. Joseph. The Italians will have parades and celebrations for the Feast of St. Joseph next week. Photo clockwise from top: mask made from Mardi Gras beads at Little Vic's, slave quarters on Rampart, and portion of the old Slave Exchange on St. Louis (the original wall with the name was destroyed except for this small segment).

After the tour we three amigas ate at the Court of Two Sisters on Royal. It was a courtyard jazz brunch, but was in the dining room and not the courtyard because of the rain. But there was live jazz – or really jazzy show tunes. The buffet was well done and had: (a) some interesting new things like cold sweet potato salad, (b) crawfish pasta, (c) duck – kind of dry, (d) and more pecan pie for dessert. The wait staff were superb – and entertaining.

After lunch we split up. I bought two refrigerator magnets at the little shop where we met, and one of the two Mardi Gras masks I looked at yesterday at the art gallery. I settled on the comedy clown one. I decided the grandkids might be afraid of the Italian hawk nose one. I walked back to the hotel and spent over an hour cleaning out my computer’s browser history to make it go faster. Worked – sort of. I checked Facebook, and wrote up the direction to both Slidell and Pensacola for tomorrow, then updated my journal. Did not have time to blog. We had intended to go to Palm Court Jazz Club, but opted for drinks in the Le Richelieu bar instead.