After JazzFest, Mechen and I had a morning in NOLA. We went to the WWII museum which was pretty awesome. I had been once several years ago and not too much had changed but it is really impressive. The exhibit narrative flows well and is thoughtful with a lot of multimedia enhancement.
The WWII museum is in New Orleans because the original amphib boat design that ultimately allowed D-Day to happen at all was based off the Higgins boat. Higgins was a New Orleans ship-builder who built these boats to navigate the shallow bayou water. His design was adapted to the military platform to transport in troops and equipment to the beach.
Before we went into the main exhibit, we went to the second floor where there was a special 9/11 exhibit on loan from NYC. There were several artifacts recovered from that day in addition to personal stories of victims and survivors as well as surrounding events of the day. By being reminded of 9/11 and the more vivid “realness” of the lives lost that day, it made it seem even more real to understand the effect and sacrifice of all the lives lost in each battle of WWII.
After the WWII museum, we went to Mahoney’s for Po-boys. I had a fried green tomato and grilled shrimp po-boy while Mechen had a Cochon. Mmmmm....delicious. Then we were off to start our road trip to Mechen’s grandmother’s house. We made it up to Nashville around 11 p.m. that night. The next morning, we walked around for a bit then completed the trip by arriving in Dunbar, WV. We had a delicious dinner and visited with Mechen’s Gran. We spent the night, had breakfast then were back on the road! We stopped in Nashville for the afternoon and had an awesome time. We had amazing ice cream at Jeni’s. I had salted caramel, goat cheese and blackberry and an Icelandic Skyr flavor. Oh, deliciousness!
Next, we headed downtown to Robert’s Western World. There was an awesome live music by Rachel Hester and the Tennessee Walkers. Mechen also convinced me to go to Gorrin’s hat store where we both bought hats! I was excited to get a super-cute hat that actually fit my big noggin! After that, we were off to Birmingham to be a little closer to New Orleans before calling it a night.
The next day, we made it to New Orleans in time to meet Mechen’s cousin Scott for lunch. We went to Cochon butcher...oh, man was it good! Cochon was a restaurant I had actually wanted to go to but the butcher was its more informal sandwhich shop around the corner. I had a muffelleta sandwhich and Mechen and Scott had pulled pork. It was all so tasty. We walked off a part of lunch by taking a lap at the Audubon Park before heading to the airport.
And that was our vacation! Kind of on the busy side, especially at the end but it was nice to combine fun and family. I’m not sure where our next vacation will be but I’m hoping we’ll get to do something in September/October timeframe after the Summer tourist rush.
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