New Orleans Adventures - Part 2 - WW2 Museum

While we were hanging out at the hotel, I was looking up places that I thought the boyfriend would like to visit. I am more into the spooky and spiritual history of cities, he likes the spooky but leans more towards the military history. As I was doing my research I found the WW2 Museum. Tuesday was another rainy day so it was the perfect time to spend the day indoors. We walked over thinking it would take a couple hours to walk through. This place was huge and full of information, it took us most of the day to go through. After we bought our tickets we were given a plastic dog tag. They have you start off on what looks like a train to explain the dog tag. They pick a WW2 Vet for you so you can follow their story throughout the museum. They had these stations that you would wave your tag above and it would tell you a little history about your chosen vet. You can also collect items to look at later on their website. This was a super cool interactive addition to the museum. I don't have much to say about all the pictures because I do not remember what everything is called, but really liked seeing all the old vehicles.

We had a vet stop us before we headed to the next exhibit and he explained a couple of things to us. I found this part really neat the way they portrayed it. Each of the flags below has little soldiers lined up in them, each soldier represented 2,000 soldiers that fought in the war.

I took a picture of this bunk bed because it reminded me of the bunk beds we had growing up. If I remember correctly they actually had US Army imprinted on them.

This building had a bunch of the vehicles and planes used in the wars.

As we were walking around I got some pictures of the city skyline.

After the museum we ended up back at the outlets, then back to the room. For dinner that night we ended up a Bubba Gump's, it was pretty good. The server actually had a few trivia questions from the movie, which the boyfriend knew the answers to all but one.

I didn't want to make these blog posts to long so I have one more post to come. Hopefully I can get that one up tomorrow.

New Orleans Adventures - Part 1

One of my long time goals has always been to visit New Orleans. I really wanted to make it a trip for my 40th birthday. Instead we made it as our Christmas Trip. We left Saturday afternoon and drove as far as we could and made it to Tallahassee.

The next morning we got up and started our drive for the rest of the way. Here we are going through the tunnel in Alabama.

We finally made it to the resort. The room was beautiful and comfortable.

The first night we walked down Canal Street down to Bourbon Street. I didn't take any pictures of this because we were just taking it all in. I have to say Bourbon is not my favorite part of New Orleans. We ended up turning down one of the side streets and ended up down by the water.

We then found a place to eat dinner. I have to admit most of the food was amazing. After dinner we headed back to the room and checked out the sundeck on the roof.

It was supposed to rain most of the time we were there, and it was supposed to start Monday afternoon. We decided to go ahead and do the cemetery tour early in the morning to beat the rain.

This first grave was for a VooDoo priest. I do not remember the name that she gave of who it was though.

Here is a wall of tombs. It is neat how each one is a little different.

A pretty rose from a rose bush that a family planted next to their loved one.

I love all the wrought iron fencing around the tombs.

This is the statue that was in the movie Easy Rider. She explained that the hand was broken off on accident when the guy from the movie sat in her lap.

This pyramid tomb is owned by Nicolas Cage. The locals seem to not like it there and call it an eye sore. I actually kind of like it, but it does distract from the old antique tombs.

More of the wrought iron work in front of a tomb that is in a wall.

This tomb is supposedly the tomb of one of Marie Laveau's daughters, who also practiced VooDoo.

The tour guide asked what we thought the x's stood for. I always thought they stood for a request for a curse. She said the legend says its for a wish, but said that they do not mean anything. I think that has something to do with the Catholic church not wanting to encourage the marking of the graves.

Another tomb with a wrought iron fence around it that is beautiful.

Finally here is the tomb of Marie Laveau. You can't see as many of the markings on it anymore, because somebody had painted over it with pink paint. The church paid to have it restored but a lot of the original markings are now buried under paint.

This is a tomb of a painter. Her son comes and paints the tomb to match his mother's personality.

After the cemetery tour we ended up at the VooDoo Museum. This place was super small but full of information.

I really enjoy learning about different religions and spiritualities. We ended up visiting a couple of the little VooDoo Shops after that.

Then we made our way to Café Du Monde for some coffee and beignets. The coffee was great and the beignets were amazing.

We then walked around the little mall that was near the resort, and then made it over to the outlet mall. I took this picture from the outlets to show the fog resting on the tops of the buildings.

We ended up soaked so went back to the room to change for dinner. We got lucky and the rain stopped while we walked to New Orleans Hamburger & Seafood for dinner. The food was wonderful and the fries were awesome. It started raining again as we were finishing our meal. The Saints were playing there in New Orleans so the streets were pretty quite. The bar had the game on so we moved to watch and had our one and only beer the whole time we were there.

This was one of my favorite days in New Orleans. Look for part 2 to come soon.