3 nights in New Orleans…with kids

Swapping bagels for beignets

I was looking through the NYC Public School’s school calendar, and saw there was a Thursday and a Friday off in June. I’ve always wanted to go to New Orleans and this weekend was presenting itself as the perfect opportunity. I checked the (hallowed) shared calendar and saw that David was in Ireland that weekend for work, so we couldn't go. Until I thought: well, why can't I? I’ll be ferrying them round children’s museums and playgrounds in New York by myself anyway. Why not do all that, but against a New Orleans backdrop? Swap our bagel breaks for beignets?

I was yet to book, but anyone I mentioned the potential trip to, said “It’s not a place to bring kids”, “Save it for a child-free weekend”, “It’s a party town”. Instead of being put off however, I kept asking different people what they thought, until I got the answer I wanted, and then I stopped asking.

“Lisa said New Orleans is great for kids!”, I told David.

“Lisa? Lisa your wildest friend, Lisa?”

“Yeah, Lisa. You know, Lisa. Wild Lisa!”

I booked.

I got the kids their very own luggage: pink unicorn suitcases with matching backpacks and neck pillows. We watched videos of things to do in New Orleans and we wrote our own to-do list. We watched New Orleans cartoons - Fright Krewe and The Princess and the Frog - and practised saying New Orleans in a New Orleans accent. We were ready for our first girls’ trip!

Here’s what we did:

Thursday afternoon, landed 5pm:

We got the first taxi that pulled up. As we drove out of the airport, I noticed a huge parking lot, filled with taxis. The drivers of the taxis were hanging around, lying down, napping or fanning themselves in the heat. I asked the driver if that was a queue and he said yes, that he had waited 4 hours to pick up this fare. He was a Haitian man who had arrived in New Orleans 50 years ago and he gave me his card as we got out.

Stayed:

Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street. A nicely grand hotel and a perfect haven from the madness of the French Quarter, which did feel a bit mad at times. Truman Capote claims to have been born in the hotel (according to the video that played on the TV in the room).

Thursday evening:

We unpacked, changed and went for dinner in nearby Antoine’s, the oldest restaurant in New Orleans. I had fish amandine and the girls had chicken tenders and fries. Afterwards, we were invited to explore the various rooms of the restaurant, as we pleased. A boarded up (secret) door, which led from the ladies’ restroom to the ‘Mystery Room’, was pointed out to us and we were told how it was a speakeasy during Prohibition.

Antoine's

We picked up some ice-creams in Sweet Saint across the street afterwards and wandered down Bourbon Street, which the kids established very quickly, they did not like. Any time for the rest of the trip that we heard loud music they’d say “Is this Bourbon Street?” and it always was.

Friday morning:

We had a morning swim in the rooftop pool and breakfast round the corner in Cafe Fleur de Lis on Chartres Street. Taking a seat on the New Orleans style balcony, we basked in the 9am heat with coffee (for me) and beignets. A fantastic way to start the day. Only seconded by following it immediately up with shrimp and grits.

After breakfast, we Ubered to the Louisiana Children’s Museum in City Park, passing the colourful houses of Orleans Avenue en route. The museum was a hit and after two hours there, the kids split a grilled cheese sandwich and fruit bowl in the Acorn cafe next door. We had a table outside, overlooking the lake, and paid a quarter into the gumball machine inside, for food to feed the turtles, while we waited on our lunch.

Children’s Museum

Friday afternoon:

We strolled through the Besthoff Sculpture Garden. I say “we” strolled. I strolled. They (5 and 4) sat in the (single) stroller for max 3 year olds. It was relaxing. And very beautiful. We wandered out of the Sculpture Garden and into Storyland, a playground based on Fairytales. The kids climbed a beanstalk and played in Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage. We Ubered home for a quick bed and TV break before hitting the town again at 5:30.

Sculpture Garden

Friday evening:

We had a reservation for a 5:30 dinner in Red Fish Grill on Bourbon Street. It had been recommended on YouTube and the reviews are good but the food was bad. I ate a quarter of the starter (Louisiana Crawfish bread) and even less of the main (crispy fried catfish with shrimp étoufée). Everything tasted like McDonell’s curry sauce (derogatory). The next day, the kids told me they didn’t like the ice-cream there, though they didn’t say it at the time and only said it the next day, in a preemptive bid to persuade me to say yes to ice-cream today (We were on holidays, I was always going to say yes to ice-cream).

Children are welcome at the jazz performances at Preservation Hall and we had tickets for the 7:30pm show. We were the only kids in attendance that night and were seated at the front, in recognition of the fact that we were (their words) vertically challenged. They also provided ear plugs and noise cancelling headphones which were welcome.

A Japanese mom from school had recommended this place to me and when the trombone player in tonight’s band was a Japanese woman of the very same name, I thought it was an amazing coincidence! So much so that I felt compelled to tell the trombone player after the show.

A hostess was acting as a buffer between patrons and the performers and when she asked if there was some particular reason I wanted to see Haruka, I got immediate feedback on what I excitedly told her, because she was looking at me like I had just told her the world’s most boring story. And do you know what? I could hear it. I could hear that it was a boring story. Like the time, travelling the east coast of Australia, an English guy said to me:

“I just met an Irish girl also called Aisling”.

“OK”, I replied.

“But she spells it the exact same way! Isn’t that crazy?”.

“No, that’s how you spell it”, I told him.

The first time I met

Hannah Christian

, she later told me that she was in a Lower East Side bar afterwards where the barman was Irish and when she said “I just met an Irish woman, her name is Aisling” he said “Well, Aisling who? There’s loads of Aislings”. And then, because it is a small world after all, when she said my surname, the chap said “Oh my friend babysits for her”.

Haruka, the trombone player, had successfully skedaddled out the back without ever hearing the glorious tale of how I was only there because of another woman called Haruka. (I told my own Haruka and she wasn’t in any way impressed either and said “It’s a common name”). But the chances even of a Japanese woman playing jazz trombone in New Orleans?!?! Is no one with me on the serendipity of this?!?!

9:30pm: We’re all in bed, watching the Lion King and eating M&Ms. This is my ideal girls’ trip.

Saturday morning:

Early breakfast of beignets and fruit in the hotel restaurant, before we walked round to Canal Street for our 8am bus to the swamp, with Cajun Encounters.

When the 4 year old’s teacher first heard we were going to New Orleans, she called over a kid who had visited and asked what he’d done there.

“We went on a swamp tour and saw alligators!!!!!!” he replied.

This was not the news a nervous 4 year old wanted to hear.

“But they didn't touch you”, the teacher said.

“THEY DID!!!!”, the boy said “I GOT TO TOUCH A BABY ALLIGATOR”.

“Oh but it was small, right? It was just a baby alligator”, the teacher said, indicating a small size with her hands.

The little boy then, opening up his arms to full expanse, said: “NO, IT WAS THIS BIG!!!!”.

Thank you Haruka’s son, that will be all now. Thank you, arigato, goodbye.

I might have briefly told the 4 year old there were no alligators in the swamp, just to get her onto the boat. (Again, this is not a parenting advice blog. What you should actually do, is read what I do and then go and do the exact opposite.) It was a means to an end because the swamp tour was a highlight. We saw alligators galore, raccoons, wild hogs, crawfish, grasshoppers, butterflies and 700 year old trees and as the boat sped through the alligator infested waters, the 4 year old screamed into the wind “BEST! GIRLS’ TRIP! EVER!”.

Saturday afternoon:

For lunch, we took a streetcar out to Parkway Bakery & Tavern, for a po’boy. A po’boy (short for poorboy) is a traditional Louisiana sandwich made on French bread. I went for the award-winning James Brown po’boy (slow cooked BBQ beef, Louisiana fried shrimp, melted pepper jack cheese, topped with a hot sauce mayo) and a soda from the fountain.

If you’re so far reading thinking you could never travel with kids by yourself, I’ll tell you that the queues in Parkway, in the midday Louisiana heat, was our greatest challenge!!! But the sandwich - in the retro American, southern surrounds - was worth it.

We Ubered back to the hotel to rest and regroup. The TV station we’d found, that was showing all round Disney for the month of June, was showing The Princess and the Frog! The wrought-iron balconies, trams, jazz and street performers making up the background of the movie being more relatable now. I had to slate my plan for hitting up Mardi Gras World and Hansen’s.

Saturday evening in the French Quarter:

We headed out with no plan. We bought souvenirs on Royal Street and got ice-cream in Kilwin’s. We walked up to Jackson Square and crossed the tracks to get to the river. Behind us, we had a view of St. Louis Cathedral and in front, steamboats coming down the Mississippi. The kids struck up a friendship with a little girl and a drunk couple nearby gave them a tube of Pringles to feed the ducks. We continued our amble round the French Quarter and passed walking tours (all in costume) and horse-drawn carriages. We passed Preservation Hall and the hosts, standing outside, said to us “You’re lucky you came last night because the AC’s not working tonight” (Between this and the winos by the river, I’ve built up more of a village in 48 hours in New Orleans than I have in 2 years in New York). We poked our heads into the Irish Cultural Museum on our way home.

Sunday morning:

I’d called the number on the card the Haitian taxi driver gave me and he came to pick us up. The 4 year old cried that she didn’t want to leave New Orleans. The 5 year old said “I’m happy to be going back to New York. I’m happy everywhere. Except a ghost train”. *Thumbs up emoji*