Day two in New Orleans

Tuesday in the Big Easy

We are very interested in National Parks, both for the opportunity to learn things and for Matthew to get stamps for his passport book and Junior Ranger badges.  The wide open spaces are not the only places with National Parks.  Downtown NO has two - one for Jazz and one for Jean Lafitte, the privateer who helped Andrew Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.  We walked to the Jean Lafitte one first and here is Matthew receiving his Jr. Ranger badge.

It so happens that Cafe du Monde is on the way to the Jazz National Park office so we just had to stop in for beignets.  There was some commotion going on around the Cafe, with people in the street, big movied lights, and an artificial rain maker.  It turns out Woody Harrelson was filming a movie in Cafe du Monde!  We offered to pay for this beignets but he wouldn't hear of it. Just kidding!  He was surrounded by people.

We were still able to enjoy our beignets.  Afterwards we walked around the back and were able to see how they are made.

All that education and eating made us hungry so we talked to a great place for local sandwiches called muffalettas, as shown in the following picture.

These are made with a circular loaf of bread (about as big as a plate), cut in half and filled with Italian-style cold cuts and cheese and covered with an olive salad.  Yummy, at least for Bill.  You can check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muffaletta

Here's a friend Beth made on the way to lunch.

In the afternoon we went to hurricane Katrina-related presentation and Mardi Gras display at a state museum.  And we attended at jazz mini-concert at a former US Mint. Again, all that learning made us hungry.  We took a bike taxi to a restaurant on the other side of the French Quarter.  It turns out that our driver/cyclist Heather graduated from Case Western University in Cleveland (where Bill's sister Kim works).  She was not from Ohio however.  She was from Lebanon, New Jersey, where Bill and Beth lived after getting married!  Such a small world! 

Another small world thing is that we met a family at the jazz concert with young kids.  We have noticed that there are very few (almost none) children at any of the places we've been, because they're all in school!  It turns out this other family is taking a year to travel around the country and the are home-schooling (RV-schooling, actually) their 4th and 6th grade kids.  They are staying in the same RV park where we are staying!


I shouldn't really say RV park or camp for where we stayed.  The name was "French Quarter RV Resort," and in many ways it was the nicest place we've stayed.  There was a pool and hot tub.  There were personal bathrooms and showers.  Nice!