Thursday, 17 April
As indicated in yesterday’s post, we leave our lodging in a taxi with all of our baggage and head to the Hotel that Tony had steered us to. We were lucky enough to have our rooms already available so checked-in and deposited our bags. The rooms are small but quite usable and the wireless works well, unlike the last place. We are in the middle of the French Quarter and we head out to explore and eat.
Our first stop is the famous diner for Breakfast, the Clover Grill. The Breakfasts were really good and included Hash Browns!! We do not seem to have any photos of Clover Grill, but here is an Urbanspoon reference for it:
http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/57/620491/restaurant/French-Quarter/Clover-Grill-New-Orleans
and if you just Google “Clover Grill French Quarter” there are several photos there. They have a website but it is not working currently.
We walked along Bourbon Street for a while:
We then stopped at a bar, Tropical Isle.
This bar was amazing, some photos are missing, sadly. JV and I ordered Bloody Marys – enormous, 3 olives, pickled Okra etc. The bar, which is part of a small chain in New Orleans, has a world famous drink called the Hand Grenade. It apparently is served to over 90% of the customers. It is so popular that they have it on tap whether for on the rocks or frozen. They also have a Shark Attack drink.
After a while, we go down the street some more and find a place with suitable music.
The band played a lot of good renditions of old standards. The guitar player did a good job of playing all 3 guitar parts for Hotel California. After about 3 hours we go back to the hotel, in the rain. We see this interesting bit of info along the way:
We went back to our Hotel for a while and then went out to a restaurant not far from the music bar.
It was very popular with a long line outside but as our Hotel had made reservations for us, we went to our table pretty speedily. It is primarily a seafood place but there are other dishes too.
a crawfish mushroom cream sauce and then pieces of Crab
The Gumbo was again disappointing (again) in that neither Okra nor File powder were part of it. However, it was quite an enjoyable meal. The end of a good day/