A quick trip to the Big Easy

Over the years, I have lost track of the exact number of times I have visited New Orleans. It all started with my first Spring Break in the US, back in 1978, when I hitchhiked not only to NOLA but also back home to Lubbock—and lived to tell about it. There was, of course, the honeymoon that Judy and I spent with my dad as the third wheel a few days after our April 1, 1989, wedding, and I fondly remember at least two 70.3 triathlons and a couple of just-for-fun trips over the years as well. And now I have added another visit, this one a quick three-nighter together with Sandy.

Sometime last fall I had received an email with an offer hard to turn down: Pay $249 and come to New Orleans for three nights/four days, attend one of our timeshare presentations, and we'll reward you with a $250 Mastercard. Yes, make a buck! And if you book within the next two weeks, we'll throw in an extra $50 card! I hadn't heard of Bluegreen Vacations before, but I fronted the $249. All that remained was find a suitable date and book the flights.

Sandy and I were supposed to leave Lubbock last Wednesday at 6:40 a.m., which would have given us almost a full day in New Orleans, arriving shortly after noon. Alas, the night before, weather had caused the incoming crew to time out for a few extra hours, and so we missed our connection in DFW and had to be rebooked. Thankfully, we did make it to New Orleans by five o'clock, and the RTA Airport Express Bus #202 took only 35 minutes to transport us from MSY directly to our hotel, the Drury Plaza. Compare a $1.25 bus fare to at least fifty bucks for an Uber for this 12-mile trip. (The 820 Poydras location also meant that we had a streetcar stop for the St. Charles line right outside of the hotel.) 

This was Sandy's first time to travel to the Crescent City, a place she had long wanted to visit. With the help of Microsoft's Copilot AI program I had prepared a loose itinerary for our short stay, and I think we did really well to see and experience much of New Orleans' quintessence. Despite the fact that we had only two full days in the city (and during that time had to spend 120 minutes listening to a sales pitch on how $58,650 would buy us joy and happiness, with an annual maintenance fee of almost $3,000 tacked to the bill), Sandy came away with a good feeling of how the city ticks.

It was by sheer luck that Bluegreen Vacations had made reservations for us at the Drury, which is not directly affiliated with this timeshare company. Unbeknownst to us at the time of our original booking, this was the first weekend of the 2026 New Orleans Jazz Fest, an event that draws close to half a million visitors to the city for its two-week duration, only eclipsed by Mardi Gras. Checking on Expedia, I found out that our comfortable room in the Drury would have cost just shy of $1,100 for those three nights. Ouch. We were a bit surprised that we had to pay $112 in additional taxes (not included in the $249 travel package), but that $50 extra card made up for almost half of that. And let's be fair: We enjoyed rock-solid breakfasts every morning, and the totally unexpected Happy Hour with heavy hors d'oeuvres and three adult beverages each meant a nice break between day-time and evening activities. No complaints here!

Before the trip I had Googled whether the public transport vehicles accepted credit cards upon boarding. In what must be one of the best transportation deals in the western hemisphere, New Orleans offers the Jazzy Pass, an all-you-can-ride app-based permit that allows unlimited travel for one, three, or seven days, for $3, $8, and $15 respectively. That includes not only the RTA's airport bus but all streetcars as well as the RTA ferry across the Mississippi. Granted, a single ticket costing $1.25 for the ground-based methods and just $2.50 for a water trip won't break the bank, but zipping around in search of cemeteries, visiting the Garden District, and short-cutting walks to and through the French quarter for $8 was a total steal. And let's not forget, riding one of those old-fashioned trams is an experience in itself! You should have seen Sandy hanging on for dear life, grinning from ear to ear!

On our first evening we took the ferry to Algiers, on the south side of the Big River. One embarks at the lower end of Canal Street, right next to the aquarium, and then it is a quick 10-minute ride to the other side. It was the perfect time of the day as the evening sky accentuated the New Orleans skyline, and the Mississippi appeared maybe even larger than during the day. On my last trip I had spent a few hours walking around the Algiers neighborhood, but this time we simply turned around and came back as nighttime descended quickly. We enjoyed a beer on the balcony of Crescent City Brewing, worth a visit probably more for its historical brewhouse than the quality of its beers. We finished this first day (which, remember, had started a little before 5 a.m.) with a slow stroll along Bourbon Street.

After completing our timeshare-presentation obligations on Thursday morning we continued our NOLA experience with a swamp tour. On my last visit, back in 2022, I had taken an excursion into the area north of the city, toward Lake Pontchartrain. This time, the tour proper (we were picked up at the Drury for a 45-minute bus transfer) started in the Jean Lafitte Barataria area, in the Mississippi Delta to the south. I had booked, via Viator, a pontoon boat tour since I figured that an airboat would be way too noisy—when tour descriptions contain words such as "exciting ride" and "ear protection recommended" you know something is up.

We did see our share of gators, one of them a 10-foot long-time denizen of the swamp named Willie who is accustomed to the guides and prefers to feed on marshmallows rather than human limbs. Our guide, Captain Jason, has spent his entire life in the Delta, and his narrations and explanations showed his concern about the environment and the crisis the area is facing, with soil erosion thanks to oil drilling as well as increasingly powerful hurricanes. Both Sandy and I thoroughly enjoyed this tour as it gave us a glimpse not only of the wildlife but the day-to-day realities of the 1,500 or so people who live on the outside of New Orleans' levees and floodgates. If you find yourself in the Crescent City, check out the 4-hour tours with hotel transportation that cost about $60 per person on Viator. With more time, it would probably be very interesting to couple this with a plantation tour, but that also means the entire day.

Sandy is not someone who can be called a jazz aficionada. Our musical tastes differ significantly, but we both agreed that what we heard while meandering through the French Quarter was nothing that either one of us enjoyed. The days that one club and bar after the next would feature a live act performing jazz, blues, or zydeco are apparently a thing of the past. It seems that loud rock and hip-hop covers are what "partying" tourists want to hear, and that takes much of the fun out of drifting along. This trend had been obvious during my last visit, but at least in the Frenchman Street area I had heard some pretty cool musicians. When we went to BMC this time around, we left after our first obligatory drink. Maybe it was just luck of the draw, or maybe there were higher forces at work, but I was disappointed.

One saxophone doesn't mean it is jazz ...

We spent Friday morning taking the streetcar to the Garden District, which is also home to Lafayette Cemeteries #1 (closed with large, rusted chains) and #2 (open for visits). The neighborhood lives up to its name, as there is a lot of plant-life around the mostly modest homes, but overall there's also that always lingering aura of disrepair and even dilapidation and a certain amount of deterioration and decay, an unescapable part of most of what I have seen in New Orleans. There are those broken and buckled sidewalks, the cracked streets, the peeling sides of the homes, the trash, the occasional dead rat. Just for grins I used Zillow to get an idea as to the real estate prices of these wooden shoe boxes behind chain-link fences, and none of the half dozen or so listings that I pulled up came in under $225,000. Wow.

Just a few blocks away from the overgrown and neglected Cemetery #2, which is known for its so-called society tombs (semi-communal burial places such as the Young Men Olympian Jr. Society or the Société Francaise de Bienfaisance et d'Assistance Mutuelle), an old, leathery woman who sat on her porch whispered a warning toward us that this was a very, very bad area and that we should not come here again. There appeared to be more danger coming from voodoo than criminal violence, but Sandy showed elevated eagerness to find the next streetcar and hightail it. (Three stops later, we relaxed in a new, modern, and airy brewpub, Ecology Beer Creative, enjoying a Honey Bitter and a Cloud Krusher IPA, in a neighborhood revived by fresh investment money for Airbnb apartments and fancy lofts.)

Look closely: Bead Trees, a species found in and around New Orleans

That afternoon we embarked on a river cruise on the Natchez, one of only five steamboats left on the Mississippi that are still in operation. When we walked up to the pier where the various daily cruises start, "Ms. Calliope" (as she is generally referred to) was playing the steam calliope (or steam piano), which in turn is linked to the 32-pipe steam organ of the vessel, something that she has been doing for the past three decades, and counting. Debbie Fagnano, so her real name, one day 35 years ago happened to volunteer to fill in for the regular calliope player who was sick, and the rest is history.

Ms. Calliope in full action, working the registers

Our cruise on a ship that holds more than 1,000 passengers but that had a light load of maybe 300 was relaxed, scenic, and totally enjoyable. The trip took about two hours, first downriver, and then back upstream again. The rolling commentary and tour narration of an invisible guide was part trivia, part history, and part local gossip. Another Viator-booked tour that was well worth the money. Did I mention how yummy those Bloody Marys tasted in the perfect afternoon sunshine?

With my disappointment regarding the music growing I was hell-bent and determined to make Friday night count. From the hotel, we walked about half a kilometer to Magazine Street and the Warehouse District. It houses not only dozens of art galleries but also Mulate's, the "Original Cajun Restaurant." Word in the Googleverse is that this non-touristy, hall-like eatery offers not only good food (what about crabmeat beignets with mascarpone?) but also authentic zydeco on a nightly basis. We were not disappointed, even if the band members looked a bit like Preservation Hall escapees who probably had grown up only a decade or two after the Great Depression. On the way back to the hotel, we walked by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, housed in the impossibly-named John Minor Wisdom Court building, an imposing structure that occupies an entire city block. Like so often on this trip, Sandy was awed by the size and import of what she saw.

That left us with Saturday morning, which started with a massive storm system that drenched the streets for hours before dawn broke. But by the time we had had breakfast and packed our carry-ons (which we left for a few hours with the concierge before later in the afternoon taking the bus back to MSY) the sun reappeared. We made our way through the French Quarter to Jackson Square, where we visited the cathedral and its beautiful stained glass windows. I had hoped to finish our stay with a true NOLA icon, the world-renowned Café du Monde. But it appeared that every other tourist in town had had the same idea, and so we decided to stop by the Café Beignet for coffee and, well, beignets. It was a fitting and enjoyable end to our visit.

Sandy will surely kill me for not just taking this pic but publishing it, too!

The bus ride to the airport was smooth and timely, and the TSA lines that only two weeks ago had stretched outside of the terminal building with processing times of more than four hours didn't exist. So we had ample time to relax in the excellent Club MSY, a Priority Club lounge that exceeded my expectations. 

Thanks to yet another flight hiccup (this time maintenance issues that finally required a new plane) we left New Orleans with enough of a delay that I called AA to protect us by pre-emptively booking seats on the last flight that night to Lubbock—but with a little bit of luck we did catch our original connection and skirted some of the (as it turned out, deadly) storms that prowled the region, once again. What a fully-packed 90-hour trip it had been!

Jürgen