New Orleans Day 4

Sunday was our last and final day in New Orleans (or so we thought). I felt like we still had so much to do and was feeling a little stressed to getting out and getting the day started. We first had breakfast at The Grill which is a little diner in the French Quarter. It had great reviews on yelp, but we were a little surprised when we went in and there were two long bars with barstools for seating and that was it! The waiters were also the cooks and you got to watch them all do their thing and make and bring you your food. Cody got a waffle with one egg and hash browns. I ordered pancakes with a side of bacon and orange juice. We ended up getting his waffle, two eggs, a HUGE plate of hash browns, pancakes, two sides of bacon, juice, and four pieces of toast. We were confused, but just decided to go with it and figured we'd have to pay like $20 more than we were originally expecting. When we went to pay our bill we realized our waiter/chef only charged us for the waffle, pancake and juice. That was it! It was crazy.

After breakfast we went to grab a couple souvenirs, took a couple pictures, and then realized…we didn't have anything else to do.

St. Louis Cathedral

All I really had wanted to do was buy a few things and once we had done that we wished we had gotten an earlier flight because we didn't have any plans. We decided to take a street car to City Park and see what was down there. I'm so glad we did! City Park is this big, beautiful park with museums, a sculpture garden, a botanical garden (that was closed), and even a small amusement park! When we got there we rented a tandem bike (the first time either of us had been on a tandem bike for probably 20 years) and rode around the park. It was a pretty nice day - not as cold as it had been, so it was so nice to be outside and seeing all the sites of the park!

These trees were just massive and all over. They were so gorgeous. This park is one of the 10 largest parks in the entire country. It also has the largest collections of mature oaks in the country - some of the trees are over 800 (!!!!) years old. 

Cody was in landscape photographer heaven. We would ride like 10 feet, stop and take pictures for a few minutes. Ride another 10 feet, stop and take more pictures. I didn't mind stopping at all because I loved just sitting and looking at everything and taking it all in!

We found this little pond with all these ducks and geese. We were the only people around and it was so fun to just sit and watch them (while Cody took pictures). 

We had only rented our bike for an hour, so we had to move from one place to another pretty fast (after stopping so much to take pictures). We hopped on the street car back to the french quarter and went to get some lunch. We went to this grocery store called Verti Marte that apparently has an amazing little deli in the back. We ordered a philly cheesesteak to share from this guy (which I thought was just ok), and then probably 12 teenagers walked in. They all wanted a catfish sandwich and the guy started freaking out about why they all wanted catfish and what was the deal with them wanting catfish? He then started telling them no one could order anything hot because the grill was closed until 4 pm. …Except it WAS 4 pm. So these poor kids were like, "I heard the catfish sandwich is really great here…" 

Not one to just stand around when I think people are being treated unfairly, I started yelling at the guy (from behind all these kids that were all taller than me, so he probably never saw me) JUST GIVE THEM THE DANG CATFISH. YOU SELL IT, WHY DOES IT MATTER IF THEY ALL WANT IT? MAKE THE FLIPPING SANDWICHES. …Cody had left by this point to wait outside since it was SO tiny and there were so many people in there. Then the guy kept yelling about the grill being turned off until 4, so we all started yelling - IT IS 4!! OPEN THE GRILL! One kid looked at me and was like-Do you come here a lot? Do you know this guy? I was like..oh, no. I've never been here. 

Finally my sandwich was done and I left because I was claustrophobic and couldn't handle it anymore. I'll never know if those kids got their catfish…

After we ate and really didn't have anything to do and no hotel to just sit and watch tv at, we went to Jackson Square to people watch and hang out. When we had gotten back from City Park to the time we were done eating our food, it had gotten REALLY foggy. I was starting to get worried we wouldn't be able to fly out in the fog, but Cody kept reassuring me it would be fine and wasn't a big deal. (However, I remembered that one time Amy tried coming to visit us in CA and there was fog in Long Beach so she couldn't land…)

The fog made everything kinda spooky and I kept thinking about all the ghost stories we had heard from our tour. 

We made our way back to our hotel, grabbed our bags and made our way to the airport. Our flight was supposed to leave around 7 and get into LAX at 9. We kept trying to talk to Tami about keeping the girls up verses getting my neighbor to come over after they were in bed to watch them while Tami came to get us from the airport. We decided to have her put them to bed (luckily), and our flight kept getting more and more delayed because of the fog. We didn't know what we were going to do if our flight got in at 11 or midnight - we couldn't really ask someone to come stay with the girls that late, but we also felt bad about making Tami get them all up to bring them to the airport. Eventually they announced that our flight had been canceled. So we, along with the other 100 passengers, tried to grab a hotel before anyone else so that we could sleep for 3 hours before having to be back in the airport. We got a room at the DoubleTree and finally, after not knowing where they were picking us up, got on shuttle. When we got to the hotel, they give you a cookie when you check in. We got up to our room, and I decided I needed more cookies. I went back to the front, told the nice man I was really pregnant and had a rough night and needed more cookies. He only gave me 2 more, but I was happy with the results. He was happy I wasn't in labor. 

We finally went to bed around midnight, only to wake up at 4:30 to get ready for our 6 am flight. It was a crazy day!