Bud Light Hotel

The world famous Bud Light Hotel

"From Thursday, January 31, through Sunday, February 3, Bud Light will transform a 200-room downtown New Orleans hotel into the ultimate fan experience and home of the hottest parties and events during Super Bowl week.  More than 3,000 man hours will be spent hanging pipe and drape, installing lighting, replacing furniture and converting an adjacent parking lot into a 34,000 square feet concert tent. Even the smallest hotel details and amenities – 550 hand towels, 250 pillows and 1,500 shampoos – will be Bud Light-branded.
PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1wzNC)"

They were still constructing and blocking traffic when we tried to pass by yesterday. The tent is up but they were still working on the overpass to cross the street.

We bought one day street car passes and went riding the rails yesterday. One of the trips was out to the convention center to visit the NFL pro shop. Guess what doesn't open until this afternoon.... We did ride the new Loyola line, it just opened Monday with service to the Super dome. They have spent billions of dollars in improvements to this neighborhood.

After a day of walking, riding and sight seeing we made our way back to Perino's Boiling Pot for another great Fried Oyster and Fried Shrimp basket. 

Joanne's new friend!

Woke up today to severe thunderstorm warnings and downpours. Good day to watch TV..

Four more days

Well we are here until Friday. After that they are sold out for the weekend. No tailgating for us! To tell you the truth I don't know where fans going to the Super dome tailgate. There is very little parking in that area.
After getting the extension out at the front gate I came back to the RV to make a trip to the dumping station to make room for another four days :) At the same time we put the sheets and pillowcases into the washing machine in the bathroom at the park. There are two bathrooms on opposite sides of the park but one is being renovated so there are only two washing machines available for all campers. It takes good timing to grab one. Oh and they are only available from 7am to 8pm. They are free so it seems people were coming in after hours to do their laundry. LOL

If anyone watched The Talk yesterday you would have seen them broadcasting live from Jackson Square, they will be here all week. We took a walk through later in the day to check out the set.

Lot's of tech's and miles of wires. It looks as if they have two sets in the park and then a little ways up the street another three or so. It's getting really hard to find a parking spot anywhere in town. We were lucky and got one half way between Jackson Square and Bourbon Street.

After checking that CBS had things under control we walked over to Bourbon Street to have a drink and listen to some music. We ended up at Tropical Isle home of the Hand Grenade (drink) and some good music.

Like all the bars in New Orleans this one had plenty of character. 

Today we are planing to get a Street Car pass and ride the rails....

Moving Day ?

Today we are scheduled to leave...... but...... I am going up to the office in a while and see if they will let us stay another week thru the Superbowl. After seeing the number of empty spots here I think if they want they can let me stay. The park is less than half filled and I know they haven't been taking reservations for at least half the spots all winter. I guess we'll just see.
Meanwhile I have some pictures for you from around town.

Check out the colored dog

Our ride across the Mississippi

A hard days night

Mud Bugs

While shopping for food yesterday decided to try some boiled Craw fish. The guy boiling them was nice enough to give us a sample to see if we liked them. It's like eating a minature lobster cooked in spicy water. Caution don't squeeze the body unless you want to splatter the front of your shirt with muck. (learned that in the store)

They are tasty creatures but I'm not sure it's worth all the work for what you get. I'll take a 2 1/2 lb lobster any day.

Today is the real start of Mardi Grais with a weekend of parades coming up

FRIDAY, January 25th

Krewe of Cork ♫ French Quarter 3:00 p.m. Krewe of Oshun Uptown 6:00 p.m. Krewe of Cleopatra Uptown 6:30 p.m.

SATURDAY, January 26th

Krewe of Pontchartrain Uptown 1:00 p.m. Krewe of Choctaw Uptown follows Pontchartrain. ***moved from Westbank***  Knights of Sparta Uptown 6:00 p.m. Krewe of Pygmalion Uptown 6:45 p.m. Chewbacchus ♫ Faubourg Marginy 8:00 p.m. Mystic Knights of Adonis Westbank 12:00 p.m. Krewe of Bilge Slidell 12:00 p.m. Mona Lisa & Moon Pie ♫Slidell 7:00 p.m.

SUNDAY, January 27th

Krewe of Carrollton Uptown 12:00 p.m. Krewe of King Arthur Uptown 1:15 p.m. Mystic Krewe of Barkus ♫ French Quarter 2:00 p.m. Krewe of Thor Metairie 2:00 p.m. Krewe of Perseus Slidell 1:00 p.m. Krewe of Dionysus Slidell follows Perseus Krewe of Tchefuncte Madisonville 2:00 p.m. Pearl River Lions Club Pearl River 1:15 p.m.

We're going to be busy.............

Back downtown to view more Super Bowl preparation

Took a ride into town and went down to Jackson Square to see how the media show was coming along. Arrived as the Mayor was having a press conference along with the heads of his departments detailing the things that have been put in place for Superbowl and Mardi Grais.

The new CBS arch that has been erected entering Jackson Square

The Bosses

Mitch Landrieu the mayor on the left of the podium Chief of fire department talking.

Stopped in to Harrah's for a little play and Joanne hit the big one. To bad it was only a one cent machine.

Extended in New Orleans

Well we did it, decided to stay another week and even though the online booking for this park shows it sold out for next weekend and even  though you can only stay a max on fourteen days I got extended until next Monday. It just shows that you can't believe everything you read online. It makes you wonder if they are really sold out for Super Bowl. If the Pat's had made it I would have been tempted to try and stay, there is alot going on in town besides the game itself. Well there is an International Kite flying competition going on at South Padre Island and you can watch that in a bathing suit.

Yesterday we took a ride to St Bernards Parish to take a look at St Bernard State Park. They are only two more miles from down town but we found the roads and traffic lights to more than double the travel time. It's a really pretty park and if we could not get into Bayou Segnette I would definitely go there.

The call of the Po-Boy drew us back to Mahony's for a second time and we both got the overstuffed shrimp sandwich. It did not disappoint....

This was Joanne's after she had been eating for five minutes. It was then I realized I had to document it with a photo. We brought more than half of both home and this morning had scrambled eggs with shrimp. Lunch will be shrimp sub!

No plans until Friday when the Carnival parades start up again. Time to clean screens and wash windows going to be in the high 60's.

Later..........

Beads and Dissapointment

Went to the parade a couple of hours early to get a good spot to view and picnic. Packed a cooler with lunch and libations. There were lots of marching troops of dancers, spinners and young kids complete with loud music from DJ's accompanying the groups. 

Then you have the floats with the Krewe's throwing beads. The Little Rascals Krewe is a children's
based Krewe so most of the throwers were young kids. They all were having a good time along with all the family's along the route.

It was then back to the RV to watch the playoff game. We are in Central time so we saw the Patriot's loose an hour earlier than you did.............

Later

Play Offs and Mardi Grais Parade

Fellow Camper at Bayou Seginette

Well the Farmers market wasn't.... there were four vendors there, not exactly what we had expected. Guess the folks here think high 50's to cold to go out.
Spent the day doing some food shopping at a local food chain Joanne had spotted and drove around some neighborhoods in areas we hadn't been. Spent time lubing the steps and slides on the motorhome. Don't want anything binding and breaking at this point. I also took out all the screens from our roof vents and cleaned all the accumulations stuck on them. A lot of screws but long overdue.
Supper of steak on the grill with home made Caesar Salad with garlic bread. Yumm.......

Today we head to the Krewe of Little Rascals  parade in Metairie at noontime then home to watch the Pat's beat the Ravens! 
I'll try to get some pictures in between catching beads.........

Getting ready for Superbowl

There are these footballs all over town painted in different colors. The are about four feet tip to tip. 

Joanne really wanted to see the Superdome up close so we headed out in the Jeep to make our way uptown. I could have taken the highway directly there but chose to take the city route that Google gave me. It's much more interesting down on the back streets as you never know what you'll find.
Well what we found was that the city has been going all out to spruce up the area and due to all the wet weather is behind so a mad scramble to put in new sidewalks, landscaping, lighting and signs has detours all over the place and the most in the Superdome area.

The next thing you notice is once you get next to it is it's so big you can't see it. We found on street parking right across the street from the entrance and walked up the large ramp to see if there were tours available to see inside.
No such luck, according to the lady in the lobby it's been closed to visitors since 9-11. Only people with tickets to an event can enter leaving us out in the cold.

From across the street where we parked

 Putting a poster on building across the street. This shows only
the top half of the building, it was way up there.

After walking around in the French Market area for a while we decided to go back to the casino and see how our luck was running. If you use your rewards card and get 30 minutes of play time you get free parking so we parked in their garage.

We tried a few different slots and then finally went back and found the funky 1 cent machine I talked about before. It's 1 cent but a 30 play minimum. It was one of about eight in a circle all similar. After an hour or so playing jointly we were up enough that I moved on to another machine and keep increasing our winnings. Now mind you that on a one cent machine a big win is in the order of $50.00 but you can still have a lot of fun when your winning more than loosing. After more than three hours we headed back to the West Bank with some of the Casino's money in our pockets.

Saints fan

Today there is a Farmers Market here in Westwego and we are going to check it out.

We'll let you know....................

The sun's shining

Woke up to a rising sun at last. Yesterday was another cold rainy day and we didn't do much but hang out. We finally went out in the late afternoon to check out Big Al's Saloon which we had seen from the highway.

I had checked them out on the computer and decided to go to happy hour. I guess you could say we beat the crowd being the first in the bar. We had an interesting talk with Al's X-wife who still bar tends for him. Some other locals came in and we enjoyed talking to them all. Al came out of the kitchen to great us and a short while later came bearing crabmeat cream sauce served over toasted french bread for us to sample at no charge. We had two each and it was yummy. If we didn't have supper waiting for us back at the camper we would have ordered something else to eat.

They were telling us about Steak night on Monday and when I told Al we had to check out of the park on Monday he said we could spend the night in his parking lot. He even had power as he used to plug in his camper out there. I don't think he realized quite how large we are.

Today we took advantage of the good weather to visit the New Orleans Zoo. It is quite close to the city but you would never know it once you are inside. 

 We only see these on peoples front lawns at home. But these are live!

Nice to see flowers blooming 

 

This guy needed a big space for him and his partner

This peacock wouldn't show his feathers for us.

Otter

White Tiger

Lion

Orangutan

LA LA LA I don't hear you

Rare white alligator

After all that walking without any lunch we headed to another restaurant featured on 

Diners Drive-in's and Dives Mahony's Po-Boy Shop 

Another winner. Guy sure knows how to eat. I had a fried catfish Po-Boy that was as big of a sub that I have ever had. There had to be six fillets stuffed in there or I should say falling out of this 12 inch sandwich. Joanne had the Mahony's Club, Root beer glazed ham, grilled chicken, bacon and Swiss. Only a small sliver made it home. To top it off they had happy hour $2.00 drinks. No supper for us tonight.

Later...................