Despite all of the traveling Sally and I have done, we’ve never been to New Orleans, or indeed, Louisiana (1). We arrived yesterday after an uneventful trip down, and found our way to the Windsor Court Hotel at the edge of the French Quarter, and with a view of the Mississippi River. We’ve been close to the mighty Mississippi before, when we visited Memphis several years ago. But this time we actually have a view of the river from our hotel room, albeit looking between some other hotels that are a bit closer than we are.

I’ll probably add some more shots as we go through our time here. As usual, Sally found us these lovely accommodations. This room, unlike too many that we’ve stayed in, has adequate storage space for us. And we need less than we historically have, as we again traveled with carry-on bags only.

Friday was a short day for us, as we checked-in just before 3:00pm. After checking out the room, we spoke to the concierge to get a place to get some food; while our flight served what they called “lunch”, it wasn’t very satisfying to either of us.

She suggested we go to Meril on Girod St., a 10 minute walk from the hotel. It was quite good. We ate lightly.

Then we started walking back towards the hotel, but quickly detoured to look for some dessert. Beignets are a specialty of NOLA (2) and we found Cafe Beignet; how bad could it be? It was actually very nice. Sally got an order of three huge beignets for only $5 – and could only eat one.

Not all restaurants are as friendly as either Meril or Cafe Beignet; we passed this one later. They seem to have a lot of conditions and rules.

That was it for our Day 1 adventures. Back in the hotel room, I struggled for a while trying to find broadcast TV on either of the TVs in the room. Finally I realized they don’t have that – the TVs have Hulu, Netflix, etc., but rely on your account to access. But they do support screen mirroring, so we were able to watch by casting YouTubeTV from our iPads. Whew!

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(1) Louisiana is the 44th of 50 States that I’ve been to (not counting airport stops), plus I’ve been to DC and Puerto Rico.

(2) For the uninitiated – and we were, until planning this trip – the nickname for “New Orleans Louisiana” is NOLA. Get it?