Kelley and I were able to take a fun trip last week.  It was a western Caribbean cruise.  Boy I was sure ready for it too.  We have had such a cold icky winter.

We flew to New Orleans Thursday afternoon, then got to spend a day and a half there before we got on the ship.

We had never gone out of this port before, so we were excited to see Louisiana.  They had been having record breaking cold weather there though so that wasn't what we were expecting.  It sounded like the whole city had pretty much shut down. People didn't go to work and schools were closed.  Looking around you could see where the plants had frozen...kind of odd to see that next to the palm trees.

 We asked around a bit and found some good places to eat.  There was a place just down the street called Daisy Dukes that we ate at a couple times...had good authentic food.

Friday we ventured out to explore the city.  We were right in the middle of things...french quarter, bourbon street, market square.  We had heard about a famous  restaurant 'Cafe Du Monde' that had  a little pastry called a benete'.  Stacey's parents lived there years ago and she had an aunt that was still in Baton Rouge so she kind of remembered where this place was.  We walked around for a while, then finally found it.  This place was packed with people and there was a long line that went clear down the street of people waiting to get in.  We didn't have anything better to do, so we waited in line too.  It was pretty interesting to see that they only sold this one pastry but when we tasted it, we could see why.  They were kind of like a scone that was buried with powdered sugar.  Really tasty!  We mostly wanted some hot chocolate though cause it was freezing!

 There was some pretty awesome people watching...everyone was out to make a buck and wasn't afraid to let you know you should give it to them.

 I liked the big market square.  There were people playing jazz music and they were really good! There were artists selling their art work and people wanting to read your palm or let you look in their crystal ball. 

 We walked up to the see the mississippi river, which was just behind the town.  While we were looking around, this man came up and started talking to us.  He said he would take our picture, then proceeded to tell us how to stand and pose.  I think this is probably what he does for a living (and he probably does quite well...heck he got five bucks from each of us for the few minutes he spent with us)  I had never thought of Louisiana as such a big tourist town, but it was swarming with people from all over the world.

 "Ya'll stand next to your queen...put your arms around her and hold her tight..."

 Shopping around in some antique shops

This was really interesting.  There was a group of about five or six guys that were putting on a show in  front of some bleachers.  The guy in red was a pretty slick talker.  They had looked over the crowd that had gathered and had gone around and picked out several people to be in their show.  He was really funny and could get the crowd going.  He would show the different people what to do and they put on quite a good show.  At the end they tried to get everybody to pay them for the show they had put on and everyone couldn't wait to do it!  It was pretty amazing to see how in just about a half hour, this man had convinced a big group of people that they should give them money.  Ha!  He sent around his helpers with bags to put the money in and when someone would give them money, they would find out where they were from and give a big shout out to that place.  Everyone wanted to get a shout out to their home town and there was people from all over the world there!

They saved the big grand finale for after they collected all the money.  They had all the people that had helped with the show stand together, then one of the show guys ran and jumped over all of them! 

It was pretty impressive.