Day 9: Nap Day
Location: New Orleans, LA
Even with the best intentions, things don’t always go as planned. After 8 days eating hundreds of miles of pavement, tiredness finally caught up with and smacked us on the back of the head. The two times we left our room today were to eat in the famous French Quarter of New Orleans, LA.
This morning we were looking for beignet, the local fried pastry specialty New Orleans is famous for. Unfortunately we weren’t the only ones as popular food venues had lines outside of them. The wet and cold weather made us find refuge in a sports bar serving good beignet fries. After walking around Washington Artillery Park and Woldenberg Park both under renovation, we heard a loud pipe organ melody, and sure enough, someone was playing a whistle organ installed on the roof of a large steamer ship moored on the Mississippi River.
Then, struck by the cold and after lunch torpor, we came back to take a nap that lasted for more than two hours, just in time to find a place to eat dinner. We set our aim on the Mona Lisa, a very good Italian restaurant whose decoration is solely comprised of Mona Lisa interpretations, the cutest of them being on the menu cover, made by pre-teens. The restaurant was so good that we again had to wait for about 20 minutes to get a table. To beat the chilling cold, we walked around, passing not one, nor two, but three different guided tour groups walking on the sidewalk and admiring private courtyards and famous facades.
No time to dilly-dally for us as tiredness brought us back to our room once more…
Continued next page.