Last Days in NOLA: A Sculpture Garden, Venetian Gondola Ride, National WWII Museum, and Cajun Crawfish

Since we’d driven into the city yesterday, we decided to try an alternate means of transportation today. We parked the car and rode the Algiers Ferry across the Mississippi and docked right at the base of Canal Street.  City Park was too far even for us to walk, so we bought a “Jazzy Pass” for $3 which gave us access to the bus and street car lines for 24 hours. We took the street car all the way to the end of the line right to the City Park entrance. Perfect!

View of the French Quarter from the ferry.

The street cars were a great way to get around town.

City Park has a lot to offer – it is a huge green space with a botanical garden, lots of sports fields, walking paths and it is the home of the New Orleans Museum of Art. The park is known for its gigantic live oaks, some of which are said to be 800 years old. I could hang out for days under those amazing trees. Rog gathered up some acorns for me, now I just need to get them planted and live another couple hundred years. Lol.

I want this in my back yard! Now, please. 

We decided to skip the art museum in favor of a leisurely stroll through the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden which features over 60 sculptures by major 20th-century artists. There was a huge range of styles. It was fascinating, loads of fun, and free!  I think I need some sculpture now to go with my live oaks. Lol.  Here are some of my favorites.

These are all pictures of the same sculpture from different angles.
It was three sided - Blue Dog, Red Dog, Yellow Dog or half of each depending on how you looked at it. Genius!!

I think he wants to come home with me.

This sculpture was intriguing, it created an optical illusion.
I had to touch it, my eyes literally couldn't focus to determine how deep the indentation was. Very cool. 

This one just resonated with me.

LOVE - yep! :)

Even the oaks got some bling!

Another one I'd love to have under those oaks I'm planting. Lol. 

At 5PM we had reservations for the NOLA Gondola. This was a belated anniversary treat for us – a romantic ride through the lakes and canals of City Park on a Venetian gondola. It was highly rated on Trip Advisor, but you never know. It turned out to be one of the highlights of our stay in New Orleans. The gondolier, Robert, was an interesting guy and it was clear he truly loves his work. He decided he wanted to be a gondolier when he was 17 and saw James Bond racing through the canals of Venice in a movie. Hey, he made it happen even though his family thought it was nuts. He had great stories to share how he got Bella Mae (his gondola) built and about surviving a hurricane in Florida and then Katrina in New Orleans. He also gave us plenty of quiet, couple time to enjoy seeing the park from a unique perspective.  After our ride, we hit the 24-hour Morning Call café in the park for beignets and café au lait before taking the street car and then ferry home.

Robert, our NOLA Gondolier.

The lake in City Park with the Modern Art Museum in the background.

These guys were also enjoying the City Park canals. 

A unique perspective, this was Rog's favorite sculpture. 

A fun and romantic anniversary treat.

The Morning Call cafe in City Park. Excellent!

NOLA at night.

Lovely full moon rising by the Algiers clock tower. 

The next two days we spent hanging out at the campground. I spent more fruitless hours than I care to recall trying to get Windows to play nice and do its updates. Finally, my personal IT guy extraordinaire (brother, Tim) walked me through a clean install. I used more than 9GB of data in one day messing with my machine and getting all the updates installed. Ugh. Had to up my Verizon allowance or cut off the girls – lucky for them I decided to buy more data. Lol.

We started off Monday, 1/16, our last day in NOLA, at Café Beignet and then we visited the National WWII Museum.  It was both a thought provoking and heart rending experience – the exhibits and interactive displays are extremely well done and they include the personal stories of many of the soldiers in the field. There is a great 4D movie narrated by Tom Hanks and several buildings to explore – it took us from about 10:30am to 5pm to see most of the exhibits.

Cafe Beignet - Coffee and French fried dough, a great way to start the day. :)

I found a bunch of work by the dog sculpture artist! Fun, fun, fun!

New Orleans has so many beautiful buildings in so many architectural styles. 

National WWII Museum, definitely worth a day. 

Rog was a model plane buff when he was a kid, so he especially enjoyed all the WWII aircraft. 

We finished our day with a splurge – dinner at the Bon Ton Café, acclaimed for their down-home authentic Cajun cooking. New Orleans is an old city and full of history. Many of the more famous eateries, including the Bon Ton, have been in the same family for generations. We wanted to cross crawfish etouffee off our must-have list and the Bon Ton did not disappoint. Of course, we also felt obligated to try their famous bread pudding with whiskey sauce and butter pecan ice cream. Hey, when in Rome… Lol.

Bon Ton's Crawfish Dinner - Jambalaya, Etouffee, Laurie and Omelette

Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce and Butter Pecan Ice Cream. Soooo decadent!

We tried to walk off some of our dessert with another stroll through the French Quarter. We walked down Bourbon Street – this time at night. Still not my scene. Guess I need more than the whiskey sauce on the bread pudding to get in the right frame of mind. Lol.

That wraps our stay in NOLA. This is the first big city we’ve visited on our trip and we had a blast. But, neither of us is city folk and we were glad we had a quiet campground to retreat to. Given that our plans are now open, we had to decide if we wanted to stay along the Gulf or go further inland through Texas. The water won. For our next stop, we chose a boondocking location right on the Gulf of Mexico. We’ll be parking the coach right on the beach – or at least that’s the plan. :)