Home again, home again.

I have never traveled to a new city for Christmas before. And I’ve only eaten out once on Christmas – in Logan, Utah – so my experience is limited. Amie and I had no plan for Christmas Day. Most of the touristy stuff was closed on Christmas day, so we figured we’d walk around grab dinner someplace and relax.

We walked around for a good 45 minutes before we found someplace to eat breakfast that was both open and appetizing. The waitress took our order while staring out the window. She was probably dreaming of a white Christmas.  Or her presents under the tree that she wasn’t opening.  Or her kids that were with her ex-husband.  Or what she was going to have for lunch.  I pondered all these things that she might have been dreaming about while she was taking our order and decided it was her kids, because that seemed to be the most dramatic. I had no information to back up that conclusion – just my imagination.

I ordered the Cajun French Toast, which, as it turns out, was just regular French toast.

My eggs were seriously undercooked.  And, well, what do you expect? The diner was in the touristy part of town and touristy parts of towns do not generally have stellar food.  Why is that?  No idea.

Anyhow.  We finished our average breakfast while eavesdropping on a woman wishing her family a Merry Christmas over the phone while she was eating and a cute mom and son coming in, after dropping someone off at the airport and telling the daydreaming waitress about what they got for Christmas.

We wished the staff of the mediocre diner a Merry Christmas and headed out for more walking.  The wind was fierce on Christmas Day.  Very fierce.  But we kept walking.  And I started coughing.  Oh.  Right.  In case you haven’t been following my illness tweets on Twitter, I have bronchitis.

We passed the culinary antique shop that we looked in the day before, which was so festive.  I had to take a picture of the outside.

All the houses were festive, too.  And the people!  I swear more than half the people we saw were wearing Santa hats.  It was impossible not to be in a delightful mood, even with a body-shaking cough.

The ferries were operating on Christmas day, so we took the ferry out to Algiers Point.  It seemed like there was lots of stuff to see there, but we were on foot and my cough was getting worse and it was pretty darn cold with that wind.  So we turned around and went back to the hotel.

I recovered from my coughing fit and we decided to go see a movie.  We got our car and drove to a nearby town to see The King’s Speech. It had Colin Firth in it, so it was awesome, as any Colin Firth movie is, except the second Bridget Jones movie.  Which was horrible.  Anyway.  At the movie theater, they had a daquiri machine, a margarita machine and a Jack and Coke machine.  It seems like alcoholism might be more likely in New Orleans, just based on access.

I had decided that wherever we ate dinner, I wanted red meat.  Preferably prime rib.  With potatoes and gravy.  It just seemed like that would be a good Christmas dinner after a blustery, face-chapping, windy day.  I might have dreamed about it at the movie when I fell asleep and Amie had to wake me up because I snored.

So when we got back to the hotel and the restaurant was nearly empty, I was excited.  We dropped our stuff off in our room and then headed to the restaurant.  Oh.  No reservations?  No room.  At all. All night.  Booked solid.  Crap.  We went back to our room and started calling places we knew were open.  All.  Booked.  Except one steak house that had horrible reviews on Urbanspoon.  Something about questionable meat.  They had openings.  But we decided against it.

After an hour and a half of making phone calls, debating whether or not to go to IHOP next door, which I simply could not do after eating a mediocre breakfast, a hot dog at the movie theater and nothing else all day.  We ended up in the hotel bar.  I ordered a hamburger.  It took over an hour to get it.  I was ready to eat my sweater.  As it turns out, the hamburger tasted rather like my sweater.  Not good.

So.  My advice to you if you are traveling on a holiday.  Make a reservation for dinner.  If you don’t, any place good will be filled up and you will end up at IHOP or at the hotel bar eating crappy food.  I am going to remember to do that next time.  For sure.

We went back to our room, called our families, and went to bed.  The next day, we got up at 5 and drove back to Dallas, where I got on a plane and flew back to PDX.

I loved my vacation.  I love New Orleans.  It is such a festive, cheery, care-free city.  At least the parts that I saw.  There’s so much more I want to see.  I want to go on a Haunted New Orleans tour, a Swamp Tour.  Maybe see a few plantations.  Maybe hear some live music.  Eat at more restaurants, meet more people.  I’m not done with you New Orleans, not by a long shot.