The Big Easy for Families, or, Why Bourbon Street is Rated R, Even During the Day

I have taken months to finally put up this post, just because of my super-busy book deadline schedule. However, better late than never. Before we take our next trip to Chicago, I need to finish filling you in on our Alabama spring break vacation.

On the way home from Gulf Shores, we took a slight detour through New Orleans. Ben and I had been there before Hurricane Katrina, but not since. Plus, we thought this would be a good experience for the kids. We drove through swamps and over the bayou. Coming into town, we saw a lot of destruction.





But by the time we got to the French Quarter, everything looked fine. We checked into our beautiful hotel, Le Pavilion--a splurge, but worth it.





Then we headed out to Mothers for lunch. I've since learned you are supposed to go there for breakfast, not lunch. Oh well, we wanted to sample New Orleans cuisine so we tried a little of everything--crawfish etouffe, jambalaya, bread pudding, po' boys, etc.





The kids were game and sampled many things, although they weren't particularly crazy about any of them. I think the food was a bit bland, maybe for tourists? Not what I expected. But it was a fun experience nevertheless. Down-and-dirty.

Then, we decided to walk around the French Quarter and check out Bourbon Street. I figured this would be fine during the day, and the boys, being fairly worldly at ages 9 and 12, would be fine. They were fine, all right--especially when the bikini-clad strippers came out on one of the balconies over a strip club and threw beads to them. Oh yeah, they treasure those beads. I also had forgotten how blatantly pornographic some of the signs are outside the strip clubs, not to mention the racy merchandise in all the stores. Until the stripper incident, the boys were actually pretty bored, but that perked them up. Then we found a voodoo store, and they thought that was pretty cool, too. Emmett bought a power charm. Angus bought a voodoo doll. Emmett already had a voodoo doll from the hotel gift bag, so they spent some time practicing trying to voodoo each other ("Now close your eyes and tell me where you feel a pain...").











After a long day of walking around, we went back to the hotel and swam on the rooftop pool, which was very very nice. Ben and I ordered Hurricanes and I spent some time in the jacuzzi. When an employee came up to ask if we were throwing water off the side of the roof onto the now-angry guests, I said "Of course not!" Then Angus sheepishly admitted that he had thrown a cup of water at Emmett, Emmett had ducked, and it had indeed gone overboard. How embarrassing--fortunately the hotel employee didn't chastise us but instead admitted that she had grandsons. (But she did tell them not to do it anymore.)

Ben and I spent the evening in the hotel bar while the boys watched TV in the room (no evening Bourbon Street for us on this trip).

The next morning, Ben and Emmett stepped outside and then called the room because thousands of people were running by the front of the hotel. It was some kind of marathon, but in New Orleans, that means many of the runners were carrying kegs of beer on their backs, or pulling beer in a wagon behind them. Emmett ran along for awhile, came back, ran along again, came back. After that, we had a very nice breakfast included in our hotel package.

The package also included free tickets to the aquarium, so the next morning, we packed up, visited the aquarium, then headed north. We stayed in a hotel that night just outside St. Louis, then met Nick and Amy at Amy's parents' house in St. Louis to spend Easter there. We ate and chatted. About mid-afternoon, we switched passengers around a bit to mix things up. I drove Amy and Angus home, while Nick drove Ben, Emmett, Riley, and Lucas home.

And that was the end of our eventful and, in retrospect, wildly varied spring break. I think we should do it again next year.