Sunday, October 25th
Our last full day in New Orleans! Last day to have Optimal Fun! We're up at around 10:15am, first me to, as usual, do some writing, then Jess to take our $20 food voucher downstairs to get some breakfast before we have to check out at 11am. She gets back basically just at 11am and explains that she'd ordered a breakfast sandwich and some beignets (first beignets of the day!) and they'd made the sandwich but had forgotten the beignets. She'd opened the order, looked at it, and the person who'd handed it to her knew that look and immediately went "What'd we forget" and Jess told them the beignets and they were like "THE BEIGNETS!" super dramatically so that's either something they forget a lot or very rarely but they assured Jess they'd get them made for her even though the kitchen was closing down. They felt the need to tell Jess this information because a man had come up to the counter to at 10:58am to ask "Are you still cooking?" And they had to tell him they were if an order had already been placed but they were closed for new orders, which is usual. Jess noticed a hint of... something as they told him that and when the man walked away she ended up overhearing the kitchen staff talk about how this guy had been sitting at a table for a while and at 10:30am someone had gone over to ask if he wanted to put an order in and he'd told them he was waiting for some people. Well, those people were 7 people who all showed up less than 5 minutes from closing time, like no sir they do not have the time nor desire to stay open, what, a half hour+ later making food for 8 people because you all couldn't be bothered to get down here sooner than 2 minutes to closing? Be so for real right now.
Jess detailed this story to me as we ate the beignets, which were quite good, and finished the last little bits of packing so we could get out of the room at least somewhere around the 11am checkout time. Our bags, both the suitcases and the large brown bags we're using to hold food and souvenirs, in hand, we head down to the lobby on 11, hand in our keys, and head back to the elevator where we see a sign that apologizes for the disturbance from the fire alarm, but it apologizes for this disturbance allegedly happening on 10/26. The couple waiting for the elevator beside us sees the sign also and the woman asks the man with her "Did YOU hear a fire alarm tomorrow morning?" which gave all of us a laugh. Down the elevator we were back on the street to head to the Homewood Suites! Check in there is also at 4pm and 11:30am is way too early for us to even consider requesting a check in, we don't wanna be Those People, so we ask about holding out luggage and they say yes and we once again get everything tagged and settled so we can go off and have some fun! The first fun is eating our breakfast sandwich at one of the tables. The sandwich is SOO good, literally just perfect for us to start our day with! Just the right amount of cheese and egg.
Sandwich finished, coffees in hand, we're off to Canal street to pick up the 48 towards City Park! Our Jazzy Passes had expired the day before, but I found four single dollar bills and four quarters among our change so we were set for one ride there, and one ride back each! Perfect! While waiting at the stop and woman and her party, what looked like her husband and her adult son, had almost gotten on the 47, then backed up and didn't, so we assumed they were waiting for the 48 also. Well the 48 comes and we get on and sit in the first non-priority seats near the front (MUCH emptier cars today!) and we can hear her talking to the driver going "I thought it was free to ride?" Lady, you saw everyone on the 47 paying to get on, and you just saw everyone on this streetcar paying to get on, so obviously you do have to pay to ride and if you didn't know that before you should know that now. Why admit out loud that you didn't know that? Why let all of us know you're a silly goose who probably ChatGPTed your New Orleans vacation and have no idea how anything works? The driver, of course, tells her no, it's $1.25 per person to ride and instead of, ya know, paying or getting off, she remains on the step asking him questions about where the streetcar goes and how many there are and he has to be like "I have to go, pay and get on, or get off and wait for the next one, I have to go." Like girl, man's working, he's on a schedule, pull out your phone and Google the routes? Or turn around and walk across the street to the Tourist Information place that is literally RIGHT behind you. Of course the men are just standing there like idiots also, like people? Have none of you ever been on vacation anywhere ever? Absurd and also, to us, hilarious, but we wait until we're pulling away to have a laugh about them.
We ride the car all the way to the final stop, the Museum of Art stop, with one minor pause when the driver got off at the transportation building, likely to use the bathroom, and then we were walking through a lovely outdoor green space! Such a nice area, so many people picnicking and enjoying the sun and nice weather! There's a lake with those Swan Boat things to our right, and to our left we see a little train taking people around the area and wonder if that's a ride they offer at the Amusement Park we're headed to. As we're walking we see a free Sculpture Garden, and according to our directions you cut through that to get to the Amusement Park, so win-win! There's also free public bathrooms! Win-win-win! It's very nice in there, lots of trees and greenery and, of course, statues! I particularly liked the giant spider. We walk the whole place, not technically on purpose though as our directions got confused and led us in a circle but that was fine with us as we were in no hurry and we wanted to look around the place anyway! Finally we do discover the second entrance/exit on the other side of the garden and head towards the Amusement Park, passing the Botanical Garden and Storybook Land playground as we go. We can see a birthday party happening in Storybook Land and we hold all those kids are having so much fun!
It's $60-ish total for us to get in, which we pay and then we're in and ready for some generic, small-town amusement park fun! The place had hosted their Booze and Brews event the past Friday and Saturday and many of the signs for it were still up, which made sense given the place was so small it probably didn't have a team prepared to take everything down in one day. There were fun Halloween decorations about the place too, all vaguely alien themed but like an alien theme over generic Halloween stuff, like there were skeletons drinking toxic waste, and giant spiders handing out with aliens, and that sort of thing. First things first we hit the carousel, which is a very nice once with it's own little building, and it's quite a decent amount of time you spend on it considering how short of a time you get on carousels at places like Disney! We get some pictures on a carousel horse that looks like a gator and then we're back out to see what we wanna do next.
There's a food stand next to the carousel, but they didn't have any ice cream which was what I was looking for, so we tarry onwards. We were debating between the Ferris Wheel or the Train, which IS a ride they offer in the park, and decide on the Train, since it's right there, which was the right choice as the Ferris Wheel went down for service just as we were loading onto the train! The ride is GORGEOUS! Worth the price of admission to the park just to ride that alone, it was such a nice trip around the whole of City Park, passing through the Sculpture Garden and by the Museum of Art and just all over the park to see everything! Really lovely ride! Next up, we hit the Ladybug Coaster, which is a ride just a little more advanced than a kiddie coaster, but they send you around on it 3 times, which is nice! The ground below the ride is decorated as a graveyard with, again, some random alien things thrown in for good measure.
It's def time for food after that so we head to the other side of the park to see what's on offer and find a place selling Dippin Dots! Ice cream! We also decide to get the nachos, but they sell them so weird? The "nachos" on their menu are $7, but actually that's just the bag of tortilla chips? Every topping you order costs like $1.50 extra, even though they're the toppings required to make the order Nachos and not, ya know, just chips? But whatever, we get everything for the nachos because we want it and they were, actually, very tasty. Good cheese, good chili, good jalapeno peppers. Not probably $1.50's worth each, but still worth getting so we had some tangible food in our stomachs! We ate outside and planned our next move, which was those spinny swing things. They were fun, but I didn't give myself enough time to digest what I'd eaten and did end up feeling a little queasy afterwards. It was 2:30pm then, though, so I needed to check in for our flights anyway, so we sat down on a table in the shade and I fought with my phone in a brief tangle to let me into my own account and did get us checked in for our flight!
Time for a little walk about, so we explore and get some photos and my little black and white heat camera finally runs out of paper but I had predicted this and packed in my purse a back-up roll! The cleverness of me! So, we get that loaded up and confirm it's working and life is good! While we're fiddling with the camera, we're in a small are with three houses labeled Owl House, Gator House, and Possum House. We randomly open the door to one to see what it is and, ah, they're private rooms for rent. And the one we opened is rented. For a child's birthday party. We apologize, say we were just exploring, but no body really seemed to notice us so we shut the door and follow a super fat squirrel for a little while because he caught our eye. He leads us to the bathrooms and we decide that's a good idea. First stall in the place is out of toilet paper, so we don't use that one, but someone comes in after us and goes into that and I was like "Yikes, they probably didn't notice and now they're probably waiting for Jess and I to leave to grab some toilet paper from the other stalls" so we hurry on out and leave them to their business, but outside a guy is waiting with a kid and he asks if we saw his daughter in the bathroom and we say we think so, but I explain that the stall she went into doesn't have toilet paper and ask if he wants me to check on her. He says yes and is really grateful for the offer, but when I go in she's already out and washing her hands so I assume she did go to another stall as I suspected and inform her father that she's on her way out.
To the Ferris Wheel! Bit of a line but it always takes a while to load and unload these old Ferris Wheels so we wait our turn, admiring the old-fashioned vintage decoration of just trick or treat jack-o-lantern buckets strung up in the trees. The Ferris Wheel is nice while we're on it, tall, good views, but there is a trio of maybe middle aged kids doing some nonsense on the ride in front of us, particularly the girl in the middle, who keeps screaming at her two friends at random and just being such a brat, and we make a few snarky comments as they're getting off which they probably didn't hear but I suppose we don't really care if they did. We've all been those annoying kids no one wanted around, but it doesn't hurt them to feel a little embarrassed about their behavior. We go around a few more times after that before it's our turn to get off and we decide to hit some Tugboat ride. The woman running that one was SO out of it, just checked out and done aha! She lets us and few people in line get on the ride, but not all the safety bars have been raised, so no one can get on except Jess and I who chose the backseat which is raised. The ride operator just straight up did NOT notice for a good long while so there was kind of a pile-up of people before she finally wandered over and hit the button to release the safety bars. That ride was fun, just one of those Go Up And Spin Around rides. A classic of the small-town, Podunk amusement park!
Then that's everything we wanted to do! We take a walk around the place again, make sure we did everything we wanted to do, then begin the walk back to the streetcar stop. We had thought about going to the Botanical Garden but decide instead to just poke our heads through the gate a little as we pass to get a looksie and meander through the Sculpture Garden again for a bit and that does the trick to satisfy our desire to experience some natural art. Back at the streetcar stop we got to see the driver change the bus interior so it's facing the opposite way, as the Museum of Art is the last stop on that route before it turns around! So cool to watch! The benches just flip over! We ride that bad boy all the way back to Canel street, baring once again one stop where the driver got off apparently to use the bathroom, this time at a cafe. Once we're at Canal street we head up Royal towards Toulouse Royale Gift Shop where Jess wants to purchase a keychain for a coworker who always likes a keychain from people when they go traveling and I finally commit to buying the Vampire Voodoo doll keychain. It's so silly and trite but it's a vampire and one can't leave New Orleans without a voodoo doll!
Purchases made, we meander slowly and casually towards a place called Cajun Beignet and Bar, just taking in the sights and sounds of the place we'll be leaving the next day. We pass a whole jazz band in the street and admire the Halloween decorations on the balconies and just appreciate being there and walking around. At the Cajun Beignet and Bar we take a seat at the bar as instructed as the bartender is busy with some other folks. We debate staying in the place to eat as we peruse the menu, but decide we'll get enough of the places atmosphere as we're waiting for food so we decide to take it to-go. The bartender apologizes for the wait when she finally comes over, but we didn't mind and we can see she's the only bartender and wait staff in the place, and tell her we're just looking to place a to-go order. She seems more apologetic that we waited so long for a to-go order, but again, we didn't mind! We're in the Big Easy to take it easy, after all. We order the Beignet Sliders and the Fraisier Beignets (so TWO more types of beignets to make up for the none we had the day before) and wait patiently for our food to arrive.
Behind us there's two old ladies who ask the bartender/waitress about getting some of those "beg-nets" as they haven't had any in New Orleans yet. These ladies are so obviously not the kind of crowd this place, this fairly new place, is trying to attract, but Jess and I are the only people under 40 in the whole place. Of course, money is money, but you can tell whoever made this bar was expected a younger crowd and not elderly women asking about "beg-nets". It's a really cute place though, a skinny bar with BIG open doors leading to the street that really made good use of the small space I think. They need to do some branding work, but otherwise good atmosphere inside! When our food comes out we're off on the familiar, pleasant walk back to our hotel, once more reflecting on how this is the last time we'll see this place in the daylight. Back at the hotel I manage to catch the doors (which are always locked) as someone is leaving but the guy who was walking out could not have stood more in the way of me catching that door? Like, he saw me coming, saw me pick up the pace to catch it, and not only did he not hold it, but I had to scotch around him real quick to catch it and then even get it. No spatial awareness from him or the woman with him. It's like neither of them could see us at all. Tourists, amiright?
Anyway, we do get in and get checked in and pick up our bags from the storage room and head up to our room, which is literally the room across the hall from the one we were in a few days ago! Same floor, same hall, what're the odds? That means everything in the room is exactly as it was in the last room, except backwards which is kind of a trip to get used to. We settle in, finding The Haunted Mansion (2023) on TV once again, and we have our burger and desert beignets as we watch. Jess showers while I do some writing and get our clothes ready for the evening. We need the second batch of nice-ish clothes for the evening dinner reservation at Muriel's Jackson Square Restaurant. Our reservation isn't until 8:30pm though, so we have a decent amount of time to chit-chat and loaf, watching pieces of Hocus Pocus and Hotel Transylvania until 7:40pm when we officially start to get ready. Now, I thought the walk time from our hotel to Muriel's was only about 10 minutes, but it turned out to be like 29, according to Google Maps, so we did kinda have to hustle as we walked over cause it was 8:09pm when we left. As we walked we did finally see that one sight we had not yet been blessed with, the thing I think everyone needs to see to complete their visit to New Orleans: Some guy pissing on the street in the French Quarter. That's what happens when y'all don't offer any public bathrooms!
We arrived at Muriel's with 3 minutes to spare, go us, and got to have a fun chat with the hostess about how we're celebrating both our birthdays because we're twins and the hostess who led us to our table told us that she has twins and, for whatever reason, added that she had them even with taking Plan B. Yeah, it be like that sometimes, don't it? At the table we had a Drinks waitress and a Food waitress. For drinks I ordered a Vampires Kiss and Jess considered just sharing that but decided she wanted to try the Fleur-de-Lis and ordered that when she brought my drink. For food, there's a prix-fixe menu and a regular menu, but items on the prix-fixe menu can be order a la carte, so I decided to get the egg rolls from the regular menu and the carbonara appetizer from the prix-fixe menu a la carte. Jess ordered the soup de jour, which was a potato and andouille soup, and a cauliflower entree. The waitress says the cauliflower is the one menu item that can be part of the prix-fixe menu and asks if we wanna do the carbonara appetize and cauliflower entree as the prix-fix and then get a desert thrown in with that. We do the math and that works out to be cheaper than ordering all of that separately so we say sure and order the bread pudding for desert.
For a second, Jess is concerned that the waitress misunderstood and would being us 2 of everything, but when she brought only 1 soup spoon Jess figured she understood what we meant, and she did! The soup and carbonara came first and both were great, Jess wants to try and find a recipe to make the soup herself because she liked it so much, and then came the cauliflower and egg rolls, which Jess and I could have finished but then we wouldn't have room for desert and we're rather take home leftovers of the entrees and the desert, so we ask for a box for those. As we're eating the entrees, however, a party comes in an says the rest of the part told them they were upstairs. Their waitress explains that they're probably at the bar in the Seance Room upstairs and will come down to meet them for food as there's no table seating upstairs. I ask our waitress, when we request out boxes, about seeing the Seance Room and she explains that the bar closes around 10pm but the room remains open for people to look while there's still guests in the restaurant so we can finish our desert and then go up and have a look, which is all Jess and I wanna do. The drink waitress says the same thing when we ask her, just to confirm that it won't be closed while we eat desert.
Bread pudding arrives and it has a nice covering of pecans that the bread pudding on the river boat didn't have and those really elevated the piece! Very tasty, we actually scarf the whole thing down so fast our plate got cleared before the waitress could even ask us if we liked it. I guess cause we got a box for the entrees she assumed we wouldn't finish the desert, but we'd left room for desert BY asking for the boxes for the entrees cause we're always thinking. But, clearly we liked desert and she brought us the check and I paid on card and tipped in case, as one should, and up we got to find the staircase to the Seance Room. We stopped to ask a hostess about it, however, and she told us it was closed. We said we just wanted to take a look, but she kept talking, saying a party had come down and they'd closed it all up. This was pretty disappointing to hear as we'd been told by two people we had time to finish desert before going up. We hit the bathroom and decide to at least look around the restaurant a little bit, which is pretty neat on it's own, but a we're looking we see a flock of women a little older than us going into a doorway that leads to a dark room. Naturally, we follow them.
And it's the staircase to the Seance Room! And at the bottom, the table for the ghost, Antoine! So cool! We follow the women up the creepy staircase, all of having a laugh about how much colder it is the closer you get to the top, and there it is! The Seance Room! The bar is closed and some of the lights are dimmed, but it's there! And we got to see it! Hooray! I was all ready to accept that it's unrealistic for everything to go right on a trip, that sometimes things happen and it is what it is, but no! We DO get to see the Seance Room! It's so neat in there, with luxurious couches and tapestries and candles and paintings and Egyptian mummy coffins! The crystal balls and fake candles were off but one of the women in the group kept turning them all on aha! She was like "Do you think these cantles turn on?" And her friend went "Probably. And they probably turned them off for a reason" and then the original woman went OoOo like a ghost and turned them on anyway to the laughter of her friends. We got some neat pictures and just explored the place for a while cause it really is such a neat couple of rooms! We finally decided to head down when a staff member appeared to clean up the drinks that had been left around the place when the bar had closed and run into a couple at the bottom of the stairs who ask us to get some pictures of them at Antoine's table. We get some of them and then they got some of us and the woman is a photographer so she did some posing of us and worked with what little light there was and that was fun!
Having had ALL the fun we planned to have in the place, and a dash extra, we head back out to the street where we go down Royal, then hit Bourbon to see it during the night, and it was hopping all up an down the street, then we took some back paths and long ways back to our hotel, just to say goodbye to New Orleans. It's pretty late to be getting back by our standards, almost 11pm, even though the past few nights have been late nights for us, as we're ready to just get our stuff packed, up, get into our pajamas, and go to sleep, glad in the knowledge that we did that day and every day of our trip, everything we had set out to do, including lounge about and just meander the streets of New Orleans. I would swear under oath the wandering is the most important part and would argue it should be required on all New Orleans vacations under law. Just relax, take it easy, look around, give everything a chance to work out and what do you know, it usually does.
With that, the bus arrived and we climbed on. Pretty empty, but not for long as we discover the stop Google Maps wanted us to go to is a larger, more hospitable stop that a lot of people are waiting at and a lot of them have to stand or take their luggage all the way to the back because the bus is filling up be we were smart and didn't listen to Google so we got on early and got nice seats up front! The ride is easy, no issues, and in 30-ish minutes we're pulling up to the airport terminal! Everyone got off there, because of course that's where all of us were headed, and there's lots of people waiting to get on, folks in the same position we were 7 days ago, just arrived and headed into New Orleans. We take a minute right after exiting the bus to finish the Pink Redbull we got at the gas station in the Garden District that we never actually drank and then head inside. We'd been warned in advance by Breeze that the TSA was going to be busy but then it was, like, 15 minutes? Is that busy to some people? Or does Breeze just always send that warning in case people are thinking about just showing up like 30 minutes before their plane takes off? We finish the last of our Monster Juice drinks in the TSA line and are super efficient getting through the scanners and such because they don't require you to take large electronics out like MCO does so we just speed on through! 
