New Orleans 2013

In two days, we'll be back in our second favorite city, New Orleans. We've had many wonderful times in NOLA - as I said we love it. In our humble opinion, you cannot get a better bang for your traveling buck than you can in New Orleans. You will have a great time, meet great people, eat great food and hear great music in a beautiful city. The food in NOLA is of course a great draw for foodies from all over and we like to say it's impossible to have a bad meal there. The other good news is that you don't have to break the bank to do so.

As we usually do, we don't have a great deal pre-planned. We'll sit with our morning coffee and take in the day a bit and decide where to head. Slow and easy. The more we get to know the city, the longer our list of favorites gets of course, but we are always on the lookout for someplace new. Another interesting thing about NOLA is that the "tourist" places are generally superior to such places in other destination spots. New Orleans is about the business of hospitality. There are many, many places you can dine or hear music at which you will see a mix of locals and tourists. That's a good thing. It's a great way to meet the locals.

This time, we have two formal dinner reservations set: Cochon and Herbsaint. We are doing the Donald Link tour for sure, they are both very different, and they are both his restaurants. That said, I know that eventually we will grab brick oven pizza at John Besh's Domenica. We can't miss a stop at Willie Mae's Scotch House for the best fried chicken I have ever had, and for sure we'll slurp oysters on the half shell at Acme and stop at Casamento's for a fried oyster "loaf". Other than that, we'll be exploring some new neighborhoods, renting a car one day for a drive to the 9th Ward, and of course, we'll hit a number of venues for fabulous music.

Shopping is also a lot of fun in NOLA. There are so many interesting little one of kind shops and galleries in the French Quarter, the Bywater, and other districts. If you are a Mad Men fan, there's "Hazelnut", New Orleans native Bryan Batt's home decor shop on Magazine Street. Rumor has it, Bryan is in the shop a lot!

My hope is to "travel blog" a bit from New Orleans - hopefully with some pictures of the beauty of the city. I want you to be intrigued and interested enough to go!

So as of Sunday, keep an eye out for my raves from the Crescent City!!