New Orleans

In mid September, Zack and I decided to take advantage of a Southwest Airlines special and spend almost a week in New Orleans- it was awesome. We stayed at this great place on Royal Street, Hotel Monteleone. Upon arrival we were asked by the incredible charming bell hop if we were there for the vampires. Uhh, what? Imagine scenes from Twilight and True Blood going through my mind. I'm thinking we hit the jackpot, big. But it didn't take long to crush every last ounce of magic from my oh so wrong dreams. Turns out some real life role playing convention was in town (yes, real life. As in not even video games, which was my second incorrect conclusion). There was lots of costumes, capes, acne, social awkwardness, smoking and fat. Luckily this didn't interfere with our stay really, it was just, ahh, part of the charm of New Orleans?

We checked in, grabbed some awesome seafood lunch at a local hole in the wall, then made one of many stops for beignets and a frozen cafe au lait that Zack loved and I couldn't drink.  

We spent a lot of our vacation just eating, walking around,

 eating some more, and hanging out.

At the WWII Museum. In a bunker. 

Enjoying a hurricane at Pat O'Briens

Dinner on this amazing garden patio at Cafe Amelie

Stealing this lady's fruit

At the Sculpture Gardens

We're weird

Botanical Gardens at City Park- this was a LONG walking day

We also did something that turned out to be really cool- an evening cemetery tour with Bloody Mary. Zack ended up singing The Eyes of Texas on a Masonic Mausoleum. He didn't play very nicely with the spirits.

One of my favorite things we did was Sunday Brunch at Commander's Palace in the Garden District. We got all dressed up and ate a HUGE 3 course brunch. The food was incredible, and the atmosphere and service perfect. Forgot to get pictures of us. Oops.

I can't remember all of the places we ate, but one of my favorites was Mr. B's, right across from our hotel. And we only had one disappointing meal (which to me is impressive when you are eating out that much), and that was at Dickie Brennan's steakhouse. The service sucked, which probably didn't help, but we won't go there again. Oh, and we did have the best pancakes ever at this place in the Garden District, Surrey's Cafe. Seriously, they had bananas and I don't even know what they put in the batter to make them so good. And I had cheese grits and biscuits with breakfast every morning. Good thing we also walked a million miles a day.

We're boring old people so didn't go out at night- we were in bed pretty early. Our favorite thing to do in the evening was to go up to the hotel rooftop pool, which was awesome, and sit in some chairs and read. Super relaxing.

So yeah, we had a great vacation with just the two of us. Really nice to get away and spend time together without having to worry about anything or anyone else. I'm sure I missed stuff in the recap, but chances are you gave up a long time ago. Oh, and there are lots more pictures on our Picasa web albums. :)