This summer, we took a family road trip to Panama City Beach, FL. On our way home, we decided to stop for a night in New Orleans. We live in Oklahoma, so this wasn’t exactly on the way home, but neither one of us had ever been so we thought it would be a fun idea not just to visit New Orleans, but to stay in the French Quarter.
If you have ever visited the French Quarter, you may be questioning our decision-making abilities as parents right now, so again I’ll reiterate, neither of us had ever been before, so we had no idea what to expect.
As we were driving into the city, it seemed like any other big US city: tall buildings, tons of traffic, nothing out of the ordinary, but as we turned a corner to enter the French Quarter everything changed. It felt like we were immediately transported to a different world. The streets are much narrower (which also means every street is a one-way street), and there were people everywhere. The buildings in this area are a couple hundred years old, or they have been restored to look that way, either way the entire area has a look and feel all its own. We were staying the night at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel, although the French Quarter is not a large area, it took around 45 minutes for us to actually get to the hotel once we turned into the French Quarter because of all the one-way streets, the amount of construction, traffic, and pedestrians.
We arrived a few hours before our check-in time, but thankfully our room was ready. After the ordeal of driving through the French Quarter, I can honestly say I was pleasantly surprised by the hotel; the staff were all so friendly, and our room was nice and clean. The hotel itself is huge and our room was on the complete opposite side from the entrance, so it was quite a walk to get there; we had a balcony facing St Ann Street which was surprisingly peaceful while we were there.
There was some construction going on at one end of the Saint Ann Street when we got there. The construction ended around 6:00pm and the street became quite lively after that.
After we took our bags to our room, we decided to walk to the Oceana Grill for an early dinner.
After dinner we walked down Bourbon Street (yes, with our children) to get back to our hotel. Now, the French Quarter is an interesting place. There’s this mix of these old historic buildings, the beautiful cast-iron balconies everywhere, music, food, and entertainment. But let’s be honest with ourselves, this is the place mass amounts of people gather to party. I wouldn’t exactly categorize this area as child-friendly, and we really should’ve done a little more research on the area before we decided to take our kids on a walk down Bourbon Street. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot to see and do, there was music and street performers (which the kids were super into), but there were also a lot of “other” things to see. Adult things. Things that my kids shouldn’t know about for… well… a long time.
We got back to our room and the kids were pretty worn out. They had gotten really used to our daily family naps we took while we were on vacation. We spent the rest of the evening on the balcony people-watching (very entertaining in this city, by the way), and just enjoying the view. That night we slept as well as can be expected for the location. I’m 99% sure I heard a marching band coming down the street sometime between midnight and 3:00 am. It could’ve been a dream, but I’m almost positive it wasn’t.
The next morning we woke up early and headed back to Oklahoma. I’m very happy we decided to stop here for the night. If we decide to visit New Orleans again, the kids will definitely not be with us.
