We had another nice day touring around New Orleans.
It’s Friday, Yay! It was a warm night here and we had the AC fan blowing all night on low, with the temp first set at 76, then down to 74 as both Carol and I woke up around 2am feeling too warm. The fan blowing all night and a bit colder temp definitely helped sleep better, no outside noises bugging us hahahaha. It’s going to be another nice and warm day here, and today we go on a boat tour. Bella was up early again today, and was up around 6:40, then Bia woke up around 7. I let the girls just do whatever until it was close to 8am, then Bia joined her live class and Bella started doing her school work.
Bia had a good day, as usual, and just got her stuff done. She had a test and did well. Carol had sent the teacher an email saying Bia had been frustrated with some math a few days ago, and the teacher asked Bia to join the class at 2pm, but we had the boat tour then and that didn’t happen, so later Carol got an email from the teacher kind of laying it out there that the teacher is trying to help, Bia doesn’t always ask for help, and when extra help is offered she doesn’t go. Ouch. Well, a bit of each is true, but we are doing what we can while also trying to make the most of the trip, so we will keep pushing Bia to show her work and continue asking the teacher for help, and later in the summer if we need to get some help to get her caught up, we will go there.
Bella got her work done quick, Friday’s are usually easy for her since it’s less work, and she was mostly caught up. She was done by 10:30, and I gave her some extra science to catch up, which she did in no time.
Carol gave Maggie a bath in the morning, made reservations for a plantation visit tomorrow, and made lunch.
I worked on writing, did some consulting work, and got posts published and queued.
We all had lunch, got ready to leave and were out just before 1pm. Our plan was to walk to the boat place and go from there. We are about 35 minutes walking distance, so it was not bad, easy walk, and warm, almost a bit too warm. We had a nice walk there, checked out some more of Bourbon street, it’s always nice to walk by it, always something to see. When we got close to the boat area, it was a bit harder to get to the port as there’s some construction going on, so we had to go around it. We got there with about 10 minutes to spare from the boarding time.
The boat is cool, its a paddle boat, those with the round paddles that circle around the back of the boat, it’s the Creole Queen I think. Old style boat and decor, but very nice.
As we got in, we found a spot outside so we could enjoy the weather. Carol and the girls went inside to use the restroom and came back with drinks. Soda for the girls, local beers for us. Good beers too.
The boat left right on time at 2pm. The ride was very nice. It’s very smooth and there’s no shaking around. There was a narrator telling us the story of New Orleans, how it went from different “ownerships” between French, British, French and then American. He talked about the history of sugar, and the first people that were sent here, slaves, criminals and “professional women” heheheh…. It was a really nice tour and great way to learn about the area.
The tour took us to the Chalmette Battlefield, and we could learn about that battle there as well, though I didn’t learn much myself since I was with the girls walking around. Carol did listen to the Park Ranger, so she can add the story here later. On the way there, and back, we had great views of downtown, we saw a massive sugar factory / refinery, two navy ships, etc. It was a really nice time on the boat and seeing the area from the Mississippi River.
After the boat ride, Carol found a place for us to have dinner not too far from the boat area. It was called Duke, and the food there was awesome. We had oysters first, which were all amazing. I had jumbo shrimp and grits and they were amazing. All our food was great, the craft beer I had was really good. Very nice place.
Then our plan was to walk to Cafe du Monde to get each of us a bag of beignets, so we could have one now and two tomorrow… each, since each bag has three. We had another nice walk to Cafe du Monde from where we were, and there was no line by time we got there, so I grabbed our bags and we were ready to go. The girls wanted to take an Uber back, so I tried to call one but I kept getting “No cars available”, so we walked back. We had a really nice walk back, and it was nice seeing the downtown streets all lit up and traffic building for the weekend. It was getting busy fast as we walked by and night was falling. We had no problem walking back, and had another great time walking around downtown, even as it was getting dark. As we were getting close, Bella was so excited about the beignets, she was sniffing the bag for a while. hahahaha
After we got back, we each had 1 beignet outside, to make sure we didnt make a mess inside, then all went in and showered, watched TV, used phones or whatever. We each did our thing the rest of the night. I was just watching TV and checking Facebook and such. Around 10pm I was pretty tired, so we started putting things away, and got the girls to bed.
It was a really nice day on the boat tour, and walking around downtown.