We finally had our long awaited vacation! We spent 5 days in New Orleans. It wasn’t super warm, but a lot warmer than upstate NY! You do forget that temps in the 50s sounds way warmer than it really is when you are in the middle of January in the North Country LOL. The nights were cooler and temps around 60 or so.

We stayed at Place D’Armes, where we have stayed a few times. It’s really right in the heart of the French Quarter. I was excited when we first got into our room because it had a great balcony!

It overlooked the alley between our hotel and I think restaurants and hotels across the street.

I loved the balcony, but it ended up being way too noisy for us, particularly when the trash trucks came at 4 a.m. and banged around the metal dumpsters. After a couple of days, we asked to be moved to a room overlooking the courtyard instead.

New balcony:

I told John he had to wave in all the pictures 😀 Looking down into the courtyard:

There was a pool, but it was a little too cold for swimming, although someone was swimming one day and they must have been freezing!

We got into New Orleans around dinner time, so we unpacked (into the old room) and then headed out for an African restaurant that we had been to probably 20 years ago or so on our first trip to New Orleans. It’s called Benechin and is really a little hole in the wall place, but the food is good. It was easy for John to eat here (being vegetarian) as they had a lot of choices.

You will have to excuse the lighting for these photos. It was terrible in this restaurant and no amount of editing will help that LOL!

John had a black-eyed pea dish with coconut rice and fried plantains:

I had a baked chicken with sauteed spinach, coconut rice and fried plantains:

These were yummy and a lot of food. We spent the rest of the evening walking around the quarter and reacquainting ourselves with the city. We stopped for some jazz at one of the many Cafe Beignet places:

Of course, we had to have some beignets!

This was one of my favorite places to listen to music during our stay. It was bright and open.

Pretty much every coffee shop and cafe serves alcohol in New Orleans.

I’ll be posting more from our vacation, but will leave you with a shot of the French Quarter at night: