For our ten year anniversary we knew we wanted to do something different. Most of our travels are in the California area because it’s easy and, let’s be honest, California is pretty awesome. But my wife has put up with me for 10 years so we needed to go big.
“Two tickets to New Orleans, please.”
The planning stage was actually way easier than we thought it would be. We priced out a number of different options in pieces, but found the best deal was using a bundled option for airfare and hotel through Travelocity. We were able to book round trip non-stop flights from LAX and a 4 night stay for just $1,200. With the boring part handled, the fun part was all we had left. Get down in the Big Easy.
Logistics
In this section I’d like to talk about the basic How To’s that we had to consider in our exploration of New Orleans. Some people don’t need this kind of thing, but for us, having a few of these things planned out ahead of time helped to ensure we didn’t have to think about any thing but having fun during our stay.
Location, Location, Location:
When picking a hotel we had already decided a few things. We had no desire to stay within the French Quarter. While we knew a good deal of our time would be there, we wanted a barrier from the craziness. This turned out to be a great decision. So we decided to look just outside The Quarter but still centrally located. We also like the finer things, so we also wanted a hotel that felt upscale New Orleans. We settled on Old No.77 Hotel & Chandlery.
Old No.77 gave us that feel of old world New Orleans with many of the comforts of a boutique hotel. The hotel is a converted warehouse and has preserved many of it’s industrial bones and spun them into charming features that give it its theme.
The rooms feature exposed brick, and modern amenities. We loved our stay here. It was about 1 -2 miles from the French Quarter and a nice mid point between the Quarter and the Garden District. As a pro-tip if you stay here, be sure to ask about what room you have. A number of rooms face the interior shaft that goes up the middle of the building, so your window does not actually face outside if you get one of these. If this is important to you, ensure you request a room with an exterior facing window.
Find the best deal, compare prices, and read what other travelers have to say at TripAdvisorGetting Around
As I stated above our location, while centralized, did put us a bit of a ways from many of New Orleans features. So for us the greatest decision we made our whole week there was to use Blue Bikes.
These things were a godsend! I would recommend downloading the Blue Bike app before your trip. These stations are all over NOLA and we had one right in front of our hotel. There is a one time $5 setup fee then the bikes are $.10/min during use. When we were there you also could get a $1 credit for returning a bike to a station. Not sure if this is still an option, but if it is we would just alternate and my wife would ride the bike I checked out on the return leg and vice versa to get the credit.
In all we spent about $15-20 each over the course of 4 days for this mode of transportation. One Uber to Frenchman Street cost us $20 on a Saturday night by comparison.
We all spent one day doing nothing but riding through the Garden District on bikes and it was a beautiful and cheap way of spending a day. Just be sure to check the geographical limits of the bikes. They have to operate within a zone, and the edges of the Garden District started to push these boundaries.
OK, so you know where to stay and how to get around. Come back soon for Part 2 where I will get you hooked up with all the spots to eat, drink and be merry in New Orleans. This is the fun stuff people!
