The nest is officially empty with the youngest kid who just graduated, moved out, and is all set to start college now. So, this summer, we have been traveling a lot. We have been to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Columbus, Indiana, Gainsville, Florida, and most recently, New Orleans, Louisiana. We have both been to New Orleans before, but this was our first time together. I was excited to go back, it’s a beautiful city with great history, architecture, culture and music. But I’ve wanted to go back mostly because of the food. In my opinion, you can’t get better food than what this city has to offer. Most of the ‘Best Food’ polls always have New Orleans close to the top for one of the greatest food cities, and they are exactly right.

New Orleans in August isn’t ideal – it’s extremely hot and also hurricane season. Normally, I love to get up early on vacation, and it’s go, go, go all day. But with the heat of NOLA, that’s just not possible in the first week of August. With temperatures up into the 120°F range with the heat index, you can’t be out and about for too long during the day before you are hot, sweaty, and dangerously overheated– especially for a couple of Midwesterners like us! We started to heavily hydrate early, about five days before we left.  We flew from Chicago to New Orleans on a Wednesday evening. Happily, it’s a really short flight, less than two hours; we didn’t even get to finish watching the movies that we started on the flight. We arrived at about 10:30 p.m. and grabbed an Uber to the Hyatt Centric right on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. Parking is not easy to get in that part of town, so we decided that we would Uber or use the streetcars, which worked out perfectly for our five-day trip. It saved us a lot of money on car rental- which is astronomical lately, and also on parking, which is upwards of $45 a day.

I was in New Orleans about nine years ago and fell in love with this city, the kind people, and the food. But getting there and going right out on Bourbon Street after checking into our room at 11 p.m. was not a good reintroduction to the city. We were both massively disappointed, which made me really sad. It was so dirty, stinky, and not at all what it was nine years ago. You also have to pay very close attention to your surroundings. The crime rate has gotten pretty high in recent years, even in the French Quarter, where it used to be much safer and with more patrols. But, after that first night, consciously avoiding actually walking down Bourbon Street for the rest of the trip, we have both remembered why we love it there so much. The rest of the city has so much more to offer, the people are still kind, the architecture is beautiful, and the food is incredible.

The beauty of going to Nola in August is really great prices for plane tickets and good hotel rates. We found round trip, direct flights out of O’Hare Airport for less than $250 each and I scored a five-star hotel with a poolside room for $130 a night right on Bourbon Street. We also didn’t have trouble walking into any restaurant and getting a table no matter the time of day for the entire trip. So, it was a very affordable time to visit. We used the pool for several hours during the hottest part of the day every day that we were there.

But. It. Was. Hot. Normal temps were hitting the high 90s to low 100s, with the heat index soaring to the 115-120 range. You have to be very careful with those temps. My solution? The above-mentioned poolside room. We got up early every day, went to breakfast, which was also great- less crowds, wandered around a bit down Royal or Decatur St in the French Quarter, then about 11:30, we headed to the pool. I spent some quality time by the pool reading Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot, working on my tan, and cooling off in the pool when I needed it. I also discovered the luxury of poolside bars and charging food and drinks to my room!  We took mid-day naps, and then at about 6 p.m., it was time to get ready to go find some dinner and spend the night out on the town.

We aren’t fans of Bourbon Street, as I think I have made it clear. I suppose a younger crowd might enjoy it, but it’s new club music, not New Orleans jazz, and just bar after bar, some strip clubs and massive amounts of drunk people. The heat of the summer makes the odors of trash, old, spilled alcohol, various bodily wastes, and marijuana so much worse. There’s much more to New Orleans than Bourbon Street. Frenchman Street was where it’s at for us. We found a great nighttime art fair going on, lots of restaurants and bars with local jazz instead of the dance club music, and a much better crowd. We ate at Dat Dog on Frenchmen Street after a BYOB Nola Ghost Riders Tour of Masonic Cemetery #2 and Charity Hospital Cemetery, where Curtis may or may not have captured a ghost.

Early one morning, before the heat of the day kicked in St. Louis Cemetery Number 1, the oldest cemetery in New Orleans, which has the tomb of the infamous, but much misunderstood Voodoo Priestess, Marie Laveau, and the future “home” of Nicholas Cage, with his giant pyramid shaped tomb. We learned that there are over 179,000 people buried there, in a space that takes up just one square block. This is possible because the tombs heat up to over 350°F so it naturally cremates the remains and they can be condensed into a burlap bag after one year and a day, and then added to the bottom of the tomb, which leaves the top ready to be used by the next deceased family member. Fascinating! The tour was really good, and our guide, Will, a local, was full of all kinds of information for us and answered any question we had. This cemetery is a must do, when visiting New Orleans, but because of vandalism, it is closed to the public, so you have to take the tour to get inside.

I also figured out the streetcar system and took one over to the Garden District. One of my stops was the Garden District Book Shop where Anne Rice who wrote the Interview with a Vampire series visited every time she published a new book. I checked out the boutiques and vintage shops on Magazine Street and wandered up and down some of the neighborhood streets where Sandra Bullock, John Goodman and Archie Manning live. The houses and gardens are beautiful and quiet, and the exact opposite of the French Quarter.

Curtis had to work for a bit while we were there, so I had some time to wander the city by myself, which I do on just about every trip we go on. I visited a couple of voodoo museums and the Museum of Death, which was much more disturbing than the voodoo museums. They had several artifacts from well-known serial killers, and Dr. Kevorkian. I also wandered the shops up and down Royal Street and the outdoor French Market and even stopped in the Vampire Cafe for a snack and drink.

Curtis and I are Foodies and, in my opinion, New Orleans is the best food city in the country. I’m fairly adventurous when it comes to trying new things, but Curtis is extremely adventurous (I think he would actually try monkey brain if it was offered to him). So, when it comes to vacation, food is on the very top of our priority list. We love planning a trip and learning about good local food and making a list of foods, drinks, and places that we want to try. We also talk to locals about their favorite places when we are actually there. We try to balance between local places and touristy places. My plan for this trip was to eat my way through New Orleans, and that, I very happily did. I drank Hurricanes all over the place- including Pat O’Brien’s, (had to stay hydrated, after all!) and ate beignets at Cafe du Monde multiple times, red beans and rice, jambalaya at several places, and shrimp po boys at Johnny’s, gumbo, shrimp and grits at Ruby Slipper and the best biscuits and gravy with Tasso that I have ever had in my life- and that was in our hotel! Curtis is a master at biscuits and gravy, and this blew his out of the water. Curtis had oysters at a few places, and he said they were the best he’s ever had. I will take his word on that one.

But my favorite thing I ate was Banana’s Foster at Brennan’s. For about 17 years, I have wanted to try that since Brennan’s was the original creator of the famous dessert. The last time I was there, they were closed for renovations, so I wasn’t able to have it. I was not missing out on that this time, but I waited until our last evening to go and have it. It was worth the wait. In fact, I think it was the highlight of the entire trip for me.

On our last night in town and the hottest day of the trip- we had tickets to Preservation Hall. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band has been jamming here since the 1950’s and it hasn’t changed much since then. For one, they still don’t have air conditioning, and it’s a fairly small venue, but well worth the price of the tickets even though we both had sweat dripping down our entire bodies while we danced to the jazz. The band plays with a different featured musician and we saw Gregg Stafford and he was great! I love New Orleans jazz, it’s such happy, fun music! It was the best cap that we could have put on our trip.

It seems like everything I read about New Orleans is so focused on Bourbon Street and the French Quarter when there’s so many other wonderful places to see and great things to do. Next time we go, we want to go to the National World War II Musem, go on a riverboat cruise, and maybe a swamp tour. They also have a great art museum and the Audubon Nature Institute and Botanical Gardens, just to name a few other places. New Orleans is a bucket list worthy vacation, but I don’t recommend August! It’s just too hot and really cuts into your exploration time. It is the kind of trip you can take as a couple, with friends, or even a family vacation. New Orleans definitely has something for everyone.