With less than 48 hours to spend exploring New Orleans before the cruise, we had to maximize our time to see as much as possible.  We had talked about maybe taking a swamp tour in the Everglades when we cruised out of Florida in 2016 and 2018.  Since we never managed to fit it in to those trips, I really wanted to do it here in New Orleans.  We did not have a rental car, and we needed to find a company that included transportation, so that helped to narrow down our options.  While several companies provide transportation, most of them require you to meet at their office somewhere in the French Quarter.  For people staying at hotels in the French Quarter, this is a great option, but for us, we didn’t want to deal with getting over there very early in the morning and preferred to find a company who picks us up at our hotel.  Cajun Pride Swamp Tours provides that service, so we decided to book with them.  They offer 2 versions of the swamp tour, with the regular tour in a bigger boat that holds up to 40 passengers versus the VIP tour boat which only holds up to 16 passengers.  Either way, the tour is an hour and a half long, and travels along the river in their private swamp that protects the wildlife, with no fishing and no hunting allowed so the animals are not afraid of humans and are more likely to approach the boats.  We decided to book the VIP tour because the reviews said we would have more opportunities to interact with the animals and the guide, and it seemed worth it for the $18 additional cost.  It was easy to book the tour online through their website, and they offered free cancellation with at least three days notice.  The one quirk was that when you tell them where you need to be picked up, they use a drop down list of all the hotels in New Orleans.  We were staying in an AirBNB, so that was obviously not listed as one of the options.  Luckily, the Garden District Bed and Breakfast hotel was located just two short blocks from our AirBNB, so I just picked that as our pick up spot.  The directions said we needed to be outside “our hotel” by 8am and the shuttle would pick us up between 8 and 8:30am.  Of course it would have been better to be able to sit in the lobby to wait for the shuttle, but I figured we’d just quietly loiter outside the bed and breakfast and hopefully no one minded.

This morning, we woke up at 7am, got dressed and packed up our day bags, and left the AirBNB in search of somewhere to eat breakfast.  Most of the restaurants on Magazine Street don’t open for breakfast until 8am or later, but that would not work for us as we needed to be outside the bed and breakfast by then.  A few blocks from our hotel, we found District Donuts which was perfect for our needs.  They offer all sorts of funky flavors for their donuts, and DH was able to get some good coffee so he was happy.

I ordered the Samoa donut (coconut caramel glaze, vanilla pastry cream, toasted coconut, hot fudge drizzle) and DH got the Blueberry Cheesecake donut (blueberry glaze, cheesecake filling, blueberry, crushed graham cracker).  Both were really good, and they were filling because they were both stuffed with cream so we were held full for a good 3 hours after eating.

These donuts were super messy, so we made sure to finish eating at the restaurant and got back over to the bed and breakfast by 7:55am.  At exactly 8am, we saw the shuttle driving down the street, and the driver, Byron, greeted us with a smile.  It turned out that we were the first pick up of the group, which is not all that surprising because we were probably staying the furthest from the French Quarter of all the pick up locations.  We spent the next 30 minutes driving around to the other hotels in the French Quarter to pick up the rest of the people in our group.  At 2 of the hotels, there was no one waiting outside to be picked up so our driver had to call those groups, and both of them said they were told they would be picked up at 9:30am.  Something tells me that they just misunderstood the instructions because all of the paperwork said we would be picked up between 8-8:30am for a swamp tour that starts at 9:30am.  I guess they just heard the 9:30am part and didn’t realize that is when the swamp boat leaves the dock, not the pick up time from the French Quarter.  Anyway, both of those groups were instructed to call the office to reschedule their tour.  Hopefully there was space on some of the tours later this afternoon and they could be picked up on the next round of the shuttle.

When we were done with all the pick ups by 8:30am, the driver headed for the highway to drive out to the swamp in La Place.  It was very foggy this morning, so we didn’t have the most exciting view from the bus.  Fingers crossed that the fog would lift before the swamp tour started!

We arrived at the Cajun Pride Swamp Tours office by 9am, so we had 30 minutes to check in for our tour, browse the gift shop, and use the rest rooms.  This was the bus they used for the shuttle…

While we were waiting for our tour to start, we took some time to check out their grounds.  They had 4 or 5 big swamp boats tied up to the dock and I was immediately happy we booked the VIP boat.  Here is the boat for the general tour…

Notice how there are 4 long metal benches?  Once the boat was fully loaded with all the passengers, it didn’t seem like anyone had a good view!  The people sitting on the two benches on the outside of the boat had their back to the river so they had to turn around to look at the animals behind them.  The people who sat on the two middle benches would be looking directly at the people on the outside benches, so they would have to look between those people to try to see the animals.  It just didn’t seem well thought out and I can imagine everyone on this boat had a back ache after 90 minutes of twisting and turning to see the animals.

This is our boat for the VIP tour…

The bench is along the middle of the boat, and has a back rest and thick foam padding on the seats, which the bigger boat did not have.  We sat with our backs to the middle of the boat, facing out towards the water with no one blocking our view.  We ended up only having 9 people on our tour, plus 1 tour guide, so there was space to stand up and walk around, or we could kneel on the bench if the animals were on the opposite side of the boat from where we were sitting.  Considering this was a tour I only planned to take once in my lifetime, it was well worth the extra $18 to have this VIP experience!

Just to point out one more thing about both of these boats… These are flat bottom boats with a canopy overhead to provide protection from the sun (or rain).  Some of the other companies I researched had the stadium seating style air boats, but those do not have any cover overhead and I didn’t want to worry about weather issues on the day of our tour, so this was another perk for using Cajun Pride.

Here’s a few more photos from the visitor center grounds…

They have lots of picnic tables so if you pack a lunch, you can eat comfortably.  I think they also offer some lunches to purchase in the office.

Some of the animals we might find out in the swamp…

Can you see the two baby alligators?  One is right up front on the grass, and the other is sitting on the wood ramp out in the lake…

At 9:30am, the guides came out and gathered everyone up to board the boats.  We were given yellow wristbands to indicate that we were on the VIP boat, so our guide could easily identify us.  Our guide’s name was Danny, and he helped us all safely board the boat and get comfortable before undoing the lines and taking our boat out into the river.

Swamp tour selfie!

The name of this swamp is the Greater Man Shack Swamp, and it is supposedly haunted (although I didn’t really see any evidence of that!).  Danny explained that alligators don’t come out of bromation (the name for hibernation for cold blooded animals) from the winter until late April or May, so with our tour being in early March, it was still too cold for them.  He said we probably would not see any big alligators, but that some of the smaller alligators were out and we would see lots of those.  We saw many, many alligators on this tour, but they topped out at four feet long, whereas had we taken the tour over the summer, we could have seen alligators four or five times that length!  Oh well, what can we do?  This is when we are here and we will make the most of it! 

Captain Danny

Danny was great at making sure we all had a good experience on this tour.  Whenever we approached wildlife on the shore of the river, he gave a few seconds for one side of the boat to observe, then he turned the boat around so the other side could see it.  The alligators move very slowly, so there was plenty of time for everyone to see them, and we traveled the same path out and back so most of them were still in the same place when we passed on the way back at the end of the tour.  I took several hundred photos during this tour, but I’ll try to narrow it down to just a few to share with you.

One guy in the water and another up on the log

We followed the bigger boat down the river, but they stayed in the middle of the river whereas we could get closer to the sides where the animals were hiding.

These raccoons were an unexpected surprise!  There is a group of 3 raccoons that live here and they recognize Danny’s voice and come out of the trees, knowing he feeds them every morning.  They were so fuzzy and chubby!

A turtle on a log

Don’t forget to take a moment to look up at the beautiful trees!

It looks like this gator wants to jump up on the turtle on the log.  I loved how pretty the reflection looked in the water…

This was the site of a mass grave for people who died in a hurricane in 1915

Check out how crowded the bigger boat looked!

3 gators hanging out on the log

At one point, this alligator swam up really close to our boat.  He was just a few feet away and I was hoping he would open his mouth or try to jump up or something, but he just stayed in the water with his eyes staring right at us.

Danny tried to entice the gator to swim closer by sticking out his hand, but this is as close as he got…

Now it was time for show and tell!  First, Danny passed out the skins of 8 or 10 different animals.  Is it weird that we look so happy to be holding a skunk and raccoon skin? Haha

Two crawfish in a cage

a baby ribbon snake

For the grand finale, Danny introduced us to his friend Bruce, a 3.5 year old alligator who was stowed in a cooler in the boat this whole time!  He put a rubber band around his mouth so he wouldn’t bite us, then he showed us how to safely hold him.  Danny wasn’t really concerned that Bruce would hurt us, but that we would hurt Bruce.  The worst thing that could happen would be if he wiggled out of our hands and ended up in the water.  With that rubber band around his mouth, he has no way to feed or defend himself and he would not live long like that out in the wild.  Danny said that if Bruce did try to wiggle away, to make sure that he lands inside the boat so Danny could catch him.

I’m holding an alligator!!

After everyone had a chance to play with Bruce, Danny told me to come up to the front of the boat, and he plopped Bruce down on my shoulder!

Me, Danny, and Bruce

After that, Danny brought the boat back to the pier and the tour ended promptly at 11am.  Overall, we both thought the tour was fun and we learned a lot about alligators and the swamp so we were glad we took the time to take this tour.  At around 11:20am, Byron returned with the shuttle bus to drive us back to New Orleans.  He dropped us off in the reverse order of how he picked us up this morning, which meant we were the last ones off the bus.  Luckily, it only took about 15 minutes to drop everyone off, so we were back at our AirBNB by 12:15pm.  We ran upstairs to quickly get changed, then went down to the restaurant in the building next door to our house.

Tracey’s is a sports bar with a restaurant where you order at the counter in the back.  They serve fresh oysters and crawfish, and have a full menu of sandwiches.

DH ordered a roast beef poboy.

I ordered a half order of the Muffuletta sandwich, which is a New Orleans sandwich filled with olive salad, cheese, and a variety of meats like ham, salami, mortadella, and capicola, served on a loaf of Italian bread.  It was such a delicious combination of flavors, but even though I only ordered a half size order, it was so huge that I only ate half of it!  It was too bad we were only going to be in New Orleans for a short time because, while I did have a fridge and microwave in our AirBNB so I could have taken it back to eat later, there was not going to be a chance to actually eat it.

After lunch, we took the bus back to the French Quarter.  We got off the bus at Canal Street and walked down towards the river to check out the sites.  It was extremely windy, and it started to drizzle, but luckily it stopped quickly and that was the only time we had any kind of rain over the entire vacation. 

While we were walking, we saw this Holocaust Memorial and walked over to look at it, but we didn’t really understand what it was.  We walked along the path and then realized why we were so confused… they temporarily removed the art panels for refurbishment!  The sign said it would take four months to complete the work, so I guess we were just here at the wrong time.

As we continued to walk along the water, we saw this statue- Monument to the Immigrant.  Apparently she had a lot of fun during Mardi Gras because if you look closely, you can see that she is holding green beads in her hand!

This time tomorrow, we will see our cruise ship at this spot!

The Natchez Steamboat was boarding for an afternoon tour.  There were hundreds of people waiting in line, so I can only imagine how crowded the boat would be for this tour!

We continued along the path until we came to the terrace overlooking Jackson Square and the famous St. Louis Cathedral.  You can see the flag is held out to the side, blowing in the strong winds.  The weather forecast actually predicted “strong, damaging winds” for this weekend, and they weren’t kidding!!

Our next activity for today was a free walking tour of the French Quarter with Free Tours By Foot.  We have had great experiences with free walking tours in other cities like Chicago, Puerto Vallarta, and Cartagena, so we wanted to take one here in New Orleans too.  They have all sorts of tours throughout the day, covering different topics and areas of the city.  This two-hour tour of the French Quarter was scheduled for 2:45pm, which worked perfectly as it gave us time to get back to the AirBNB after the swamp tour, change clothes, go out for lunch, and get back down to the French Quarter with a few minutes to spare.  Our guide, Matthew, sent us an email the night before with directions to meet him at the Andrew Jackson statue in the center of the Square.

About 25 people showed up for this tour, which made it a little tricky to stay together and hear what Matthew had to say once we got deeper in the Quarter.  Matthew was good about gathering us together safely in a way that we wouldn’t get hit by a car driving down the street but also wouldn’t block pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks.  We zigzagged all around the tiny streets of the French Quarter, stopping every few minutes for Matthew to share stories and anecdotes about New Orleans history. 

I was totally obsessed with the beautiful wrought iron balconies, one more intricate and ornate than the next.  My favorite story that Matthew told us was about the “Romeo Poles.”  As the story goes, men used to climb up the poles on the street level to get to the ladies on the balconies of the higher floors.  The same thing happens during Mardi Gras as people down on the streets try to climb the poles to get to the more exclusive parties up on the balconies.  Some of the hotels apply grease to these poles to prevent people from climbing up!  I thought that was really funny and interesting.

The tour ended at 4:20pm, so it was closer to an hour and a half long instead of the 2 hours originally planned, but that was okay with us as we got to see plenty and were ready to move on anyway.  We started walking back towards Bourbon Street and saw this sign stating “cell phone use prohibited”… That just seemed really odd to us.  Was it because of the school?  Did it just mean you can’t use your phone while driving?  Hopefully it didn’t mean you can’t use your cell phone while walking around because that would be impossible to enforce!

When we made it back to Bourbon Street, it was a total mob scene!  It was much more crowded than when we were here last night, and it was so loud that we could barely hear each other talking.  I guess Saturday is a more popular night to go out on Bourbon Street, but this was just too much for me… at least without any drinks in my system! Haha  I had wanted to check out the piano bar in Pat O’Brien’s, so this seemed like the perfect time to rest our feet, order a cocktail, and sing along to some fun music.  As we approached the bar, there was a huge line of people lined up on the sidewalk.  I left DH at the end of the line and headed to the front to make sure that this line was going where we wanted to go.  As it turned out, Pat O’Brien’s is right next door to the famous Preservation Hall Jazz Club, so all of those people were waiting to go there and we had no wait at all to walk right into the piano bar. 

Pat O’Brien’s is divided into three sections… to the left is a traditional bar, to the back is a huge outdoor patio, and to the right is the piano bar.  The piano bar section had a really cool atmosphere with dark lighting, brick walls, ceramic beer steins hanging from the ceiling, and 2 piano players set up on the stage at the front of the room.

This was the outdoor patio area:

Their signature drink is the Hurricane, so of course we had to try it.  Just be careful when you order drinks here, as they serve their specialty drinks in a souvenir glass and they automatically charge you $4 per glass, but you can get a refund if you return your glass to the bartender. 

The Hurricanes were very strong and they were so large that it was like two drinks in one!

We stayed for about an hour and enjoyed singing along with the piano players.  Tables turned over fairly quickly, so while there was always groups of people coming and going, it never felt too crowded at any one time.  We left around 6pm to walk around on Bourbon Street, and somehow it was more tolerable after drinking those Hurricanes! 

Our first stop was to buy a 64 ounce fish bowl filled with rum punch.  There were a lot of places selling these and they were all the same price at $10 for the original bowl, and $7 if you wanted a refill.  It wasn’t as tasty as the drink from Pat O’Brien’s, but I guess you get what you pay for! Haha

Originally, we planned to go to a sit down restaurant for a Louisiana-type of dish, but we were tired and just wanted to get something quick for dinner.  It didn’t take much thought to decide to return to Crescent City Pizza Works for another delicious slice of funky pizza.  As tempting as it was to get the same BBQ pork slice that I had last night, I decided to try something new and opted for the “It’s Easy Being Green” slice with pesto, green tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese.  I tried putting my hand in the photo for a reference to the size of the slice…

Funny enough, there is actually a second slice of pizza below this one.  They said they burned the original slice, or it was too crispy, or something like that, and they gave us a second slice to replace it.  We both like our pizza extra crispy so we had no complaints about the original slice, but there was no chance we’d let either slice go to waste and DH helped me finish the second slice.

After dinner, we walked around a little more and listened to some of the street performers.  This guy was very talented at playing his violin.

By 8pm, we were both really tired and decided to head back to Canal Street to catch the bus back to the AirBNB to pack up for Embarkation Day tomorrow!

Step Tracker Daily Total:  18,561 steps; 7.7 miles; 4 flights of stairs