#58 December 11, 2021 Pre-Cruise Travel Day. Meridian, Mississippi to New Orleans, Louisiana. Lots of Great Food Found!
The past week has been a busy one! Darrell and I both had doctor appointments scheduled, travel PCR covid and blood tests to take, prescriptions to fill, a 12 hour 'retirement class' online, Darrell's regular remote work schedule, and packing for our upcoming cruise and our next 6 weeks of travel. We got so much accomplished in our week! Friday morning, yesterday was our check out day at our Decatur, Alabama airbnb. We went out early in the morning to pack our car and truck, and an unfortunate event happened. Darrell had a slight accident while backing up the truck, the driver's side mirror hit a tree. When Darrell got out of the truck, he noticed that this collision had shattered the rear mirror. So we had to rearrange how we were accomplishing our morning so that I could take the truck into Huntsville and get a new mirror or as it turned out, a stick on temporary mirror.
We left Huntsville on Friday around 1pm heading for New Orleans. We figured out that Meridian, Mississippi was about half way or 3 1/2 hours of driving. I drove for a while and Darrell set up our hotel for Friday night. We arrived in the late afternoon to Hampton Inn. The property was very clean and quiet. The manager was putting out cookies and telling us that they served a hot dinner there between 5 and 7 pm with drinks included at no extra charge. And that there would be a hot breakfast served in the morning too. We were amazed at all of the food service she was inviting us to because this has not been the case since before the Pandemic began in March 2020. It was also very different from our recent hotel stay in Portland, Oregon where they don't even have coffee in the lobby per pandemic reductions.
We slept in today until at least 6 am! lol. We did our morning ddp yoga, and had the hotel breakfast which was decent. We stayed around the hotel for another hour or more while Darrell worked on his weekly Kenya article and I went outside and walked laps around the building. We got on the road and I drove because I was feeling awake and ready to take a turn. The highway we were on had hardly any cars and this made the driving very easy, but then we went through a series of heavy rains for the first hour on the road. We finally came through the rains to clearer weather.
For lunch we stopped at Fatty's in Picayune, Mississippi. We discovered that this place was fantastic! Darrell got a shrimp poboy that is a regional sandwich and he said it was delicious! It looked delicious to me! I got the seafood gumbo and it was really good too! I learned a new word while reading the menu and asking the waitress what 'boudin' meant. It is sausage. Another regional word, food and specialty. She was surprized that we didn't know what that meant and she got to inform us about it. Another word for learning: Picayune was used as the name of the newspaper in the comic strip Bloom County. This word means petty worthless squabbling of party politicians. Hmmm.
As we drove into New Orleans, Darrell tells me that it is his first time here. I have been here twice before briefly. Coming into the city from the east, as we did, we crossed a long bridge over some vast water. There were spots of heavy traffic coming into town and getting to our hotel. Once we arrived at our hotel it wasn't even 3pm and check in wasn't until 4pm. The hotel didn't look inviting on the outside at all, and there was nothing remarkable about the immediate neighborhood. We were questioning our choice via internet. We looked around and decided that this looked like an old military fort. We were right. Once we got into the hotel and they allowed us to check in early, we immediately recognized the style of the building as an old BOQ or 'Bachelor Officer Quarters'. Darrell was in the Army in the 1980's and stayed in plenty of these types of housing buildings. It is a pretty nice room now, and we are glad to have it.
We took a walk to get a 'Water Ice' with ice cream. Later for dinner we found an amazing taco place in a lovely neighborhood. The longer we stay, the better we are enjoying the food and the sights including the unique architecture of this city and region. We are enjoying the evening in our room, typing up this Saturday entry, getting my new Google Fi phone up and running, canceling our Verizon phone plan, and anticipating going to our cruise ship around noon tomorrow. This will be our first cruise in 2 years. We are going on NCL which is new to us as we mostly cruise with Princess. Check in with my next 500 Saturdays blog to see how our cruise is and what's happening!
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