New Orleans Weekend

This past weekend, Cory took me to New Orleans to celebrate our 1st anniversary together. (It'll be a year this coming Saturday.) It was wonderful and relaxing. As I'm sure you all realize, I am a make-a-plan-and-stick-to-it kind of girl. I'm pretty sure this was the first time I have ever been out of town without any plans. It was great! Not to knock the planning, but taking time to do nothing is great, too!

We met up with Kristy Friday night at Semolina's where we had wonderful food and a huge dessert. Kristy visited with us the entire time and her pregnant belly really looks SO cute right now!

We stayed at the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. Saturday, we woke up with the sun and walked out to Jackson Square to admire the paintings and to eat beignets. We then strolled through the French Market and through a few shops nearby.

My favorite was Santa's Corner... a shop filled with Christmas ornaments and decorated trees and garlands. We walked through the entire shop admiring everything Christmas. Then we went back a second time. (I love Christmas!) We even saw an upside down tree which I had never heard of before. The big branches are at the top and the tree gets skinnier on the way down. And all of the ornaments hang down and out of the tree instead of into it. Very whimsical looking. We passed on the tree, but bought some ornaments.

Later, we almost made our first purchase on an art piece, but $300 was just a little too steep. We headed for the trolley and went down to Harrah's Casino to play $30 (we came out ahead $9.75) and to the Riverwalk mall. There, we bought the baby a Drew Brees jersey. Ah! Life is complete! We headed back to the hotel for a nap before dinner at the Red Fish Grill and Cory's first walk down Bourbon Street at night. It was pretty uneventful as we were walking at 8:30 and the weirdos and flashers weren't out yet, although I got hit on by a drunk boy trying to get me into a dance club. Cory had his first hand grenade (the most potent drink in New Orleans) and finished half of it before getting horrible acid reflux. So we shuffled back to the hotel and called it a night.

Sunday, we got up late and checked out of the hotel before heading out to the Lakeshore Mall and the Esplanade Mall. We bought a few Disney items and some maternity shirts for me and headed home.

It was a very nice getaway and I would really like to do it more often!