New Orleans Family Attractions – Part 2

We enjoyed feeling tiny among the giant floats at the Mardi Gras museum in New Orleans.

In my previous New Orleans article New Orleans Family Attractions, I left you with images of giant Mardi Gras mermaids, ducks, boats and balloons from Blaine Kern’s awesome Mardi Gras float museum – and distant lunch time memories of Po’ Boy classic sandwiches.  

For us, it was dinner time, and local friends recommended the Palace. Located on busy Canal Street and owned by classic New Orleans restaurant owners the Brennan family, the Palace is large, lively, and located in the historic Werlein building. A beautiful stair case graces the center of the room, friendly, fast waiters rush from table to table, the french bread is plentiful, and the menu supports local organic purveyors. There’s plenty of fish and vegetarian options as well as rich meat dishes to please every appetite, and we found the prices reasonable and service swift. But the best reason of all to hit the Palace is desert: white chocolate bread pudding is a classic, but so are the Bananas Foster. Creating this dish means your waiter will, with a flourish, bring fresh bananas to your table and sautee them in brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon, then flambee them with banana liqueur and rum. Seeing bananas set afire and then served over vanilla ice cream, hits all the right kid senses: visually engaging, sweet and delicious.  

Mardi Gras museum floats in New Orleans

After dinner we strolled Bourbon Street. The colorful crowd is perfectly manageable before ten pm. At Fritzell’s, on the north end of the street, great live jazz is always playing; shops sell the usual tourist fare mixed with art, clothing, and candles. You’ll find street musicians and street artists plying their wares as well.  

Ready for another day in this laid back city? We began ours with a twenty minute, pleasant trolley ride from Canal Street to the Garden District. You can take a guided tour or stroll among the beautiful mansions beneath elegant oaks on your own. You’ll find the house where the Brad Pitt film Benjamin Button was shot and the childhood home of New Orleans Saints football great Peyton Manning; discover French empire style mansions, Beaux Arts designed door ways and Greek Revival town houses.  Our kids enjoyed examining the ornate metal work on the fences along the Garden District sidewalks, cast-iron in a corn stalk pattern. When a rain shower turned from shower to deluge, we ducked inside a small enclosed shopping center on Washington Avenue. Here we browsed the excellent children’s books section of the Garden District Book Shop. Guidebooks to the houses in the area and other regional New Orleans information is also plentiful, but our kids enjoyed a break in a comfortable seating area. This is reputedly Anne Rice’s favorite bookstore, and sells some of her signed first editions.  

The bookstore is also in close proximity to one of Ms. Rice’s favorite story settings, the Lafayette Cemetery on Sixth Street. This beautiful cemetery makes a fascinating stroll, serene yet spooky without being too ominous for the kids. Cemeteries are different in New Orleans than elsewhere in the US – New Orleans is below sea level, and the city prohibits below ground burial. So here the dead are buried above ground in family tombs that look like small houses or chapels, linked with iron fences and crosses. Such burial grounds are called Cities of the Dead, as they look like small, but very quiet towns. A caveat: while St. Louis Cemetery is considerably closer to the French Quarter than the Lafayette’s Garden District location, St. Louis is in a less tourist- friendly location, and is best visited with a guided tour.  

We loved the views of St. Louis Cathedral from the river.

When we left the Garden District, another rain deluge was beginning, so we headed back to Canal Street and ducked indoors again at the New Orleans Insectarium. This great new space is the nation’s largest museum dedicated to – bugs. Well, after all bugs out number us one and a half million to one. Run by the New Orleans Audubon Institute, this museum is located inside the U.S. Custom Building. With kid-friendly interactive exhibits, and a Japanese butterfly garden, this unique collection is a must-see with children in tow. It also contains fossils, an insect lab, swamp tour exhibit, and everything you ever wanted to know – or didn’t – about mosquitos, scorpions, and other creatures that go crawly in the night.  

From bugs to – fish. Our next stop was the Aquarium of the Americas. Here we enjoyed fish and penguins and a rain forest exhibit, and best of all, we sighted a white alligator. A beautiful aquatic tunnel leads you through an undersea world. The Mississippi River Gallery offered a host of exhibits about the natural water life in and around New Orleans. Here we were afforded views of the real Mississippi River and explored the  highlights of various river habitats. We saw catfish, sturgeon, paddlefish and of course, Spots, the white alligator. His skin color doesn’t mean he’s an albino – we learned he’s luecistic, possessing a gene mutation that causes his unusual skin color and blue eyes. We also learned about the effect of hurricanes on the plants and animals in the bayous.  

Filled with information on both swimming and air-born creatures, rain over, we strolled a short distance to the base of Canal Street to the free Algiers ferry. This breezy ride takes you across the Mississippi River from New Orleans /a> to Algiers Point. Recently gentrified, historic buildings and former industrial spots have morphed into speciality stores, craft shops, and music spots. We took a stroll past small wooden cottages decorated in Victorian style, and strolled along the levee. We enjoyed watching artisans at work in the window of a glass blowing workshop, and dined on more Po Boys from a corner store while we waited to take the ferry back across the mighty river. The ferry ride and levee stroll were both great for some more boat watching and as wonderful spots to view the city sky line and Jackson Square’s St. Louis Cathedral. At sunset, the spires turn pink and the plaza takes on a twilight fairy-tale magic, rivaled only by a longing for more flaming bananas…

About the Author: Genie Davis is a multi-published fiction author, screen and TV writer, and travel writer. If it was possible, she'd like to spend every day traveling. www.geniedavis.com