Last day in New Orleans

Monday - our last full day in N.O. - started with breakfast at Café du Monde, famous beignets and New Orleans coffee in the Riverwalk Outlets Center. Afterwards, having a little time at disposal, we checked out Piazza d’Italia again (photo below), a famous  public space of Postmodern architecture designed by Charles Moore 1978. Also, next week the new addition to the Aquarium (photo far below), the Insectarium, will open in an expansion, which we wanted to see at least from the outside.

 

 

 

 

At 10 am we were ready for our tour at The Vue - the new immersive experience and observation deck on top of the former World Trade Center (which was standing empty and dilapidated for many years)  - Vue is a great new experience with informative exhibitions on the first floor (photos below), with touch panels, films, interactive demonstrations, a cooking show, etc. followed by a ride on the elevator to the top. There, modern touchscreens invite to explore the sights in view  outside. This is a good sight to get an overview and first introduction!

 

Since we wanted to explore the riverfront, the Crescent Park (left photo) and the neighborhoods of Bywater and Marigny, we skipped lunch at Napoleon House and walked all the way to JAMNOLA, another new attraction in town. Bywater has become an attractive neighborhood with a close-knit community, little mom&pop stores, quaint modest cafés, pubs, a lbrewery, a record store, etc. Especially remarkable is the architecture there!

„Joy, Art & Music“ is the motto of JAMNOLA and many local artists are involved in this funny arts complex (photos right and below) with 17 immersive art rooms of all kinds, most of them with some sort of educational purpose. They showcase the iconic art, music, food and theatrics of the city through the eyes of over 30 local artists.

 

 

Art and architecture - the neighborhood is architecturally highly interesting as well. Not only Bywater, but also the neighboring Marigny is interesting to stroll through. We continued on to Frenchmen Street (photos below) with our fav record store - the „Music Factory“ - the Frenchmen Hotel (where we stayed when we were doing our first research about New Orleans in the 90ies). Most jazz clubs and music venues seem to have survived the pandemic.

The black good-looking country singer on the photo, standing on the roof of his truck, we found at the French Market, on the way back, same for the „stillife“ on a balcony below.

The Four Seasons Hotel had invited us to a round of cocktails in their fancy Chandelier Bar. It was cool there - compared to outside temps around 90 deg F, and high humidity - and cocktails tasted delicious ("Nadacolada" - an alcohol-free version on the photo), but this was just the beginning of a great last evening. 

Our last dinner was arranged at Herbsaint in the Central Business District and that was probably the best one we had! Local fish/shrimp ceviche with cucumber followed by flaky fish and a finger-lickingly good banana tart at the end. Super-good and comfy casual atmosphere!

It’s been a wonderful, interesting, though strenuous three days in New Orleans, we walked around 55 kilometers (25 mi) and our feet were hurting, but our brains wer full of many interesting experiences, conversations, sights and impressions, that we almost didn’t want to leave on Tuesday morning at 5 am by car service to the airport (photos below)