Day 182: New Orleans City Park and a Wanderful friend.

Today the clouds dissipated and left us with pools of water once again in the low lying areas around the campground. Our stay here has been a little disappointing as many of the reasons why we liked this place last time were not quite the same. The facilities all seem a lot more run down than we remembered. Half of the campground was closed and slow internet has prevented me from getting a lot of work done.

Today we had to move to another site just down the park across from another Airstream. They have been here for a few days but it appears that they are just using this place as a parking lot. The owners have not been here at all. Reservations have been tough to come by due to the Super Bowl weekend coming up as well as the ongoing Mardi Gras celebrations. We will only be here one more night and our plan is to depart on Saturday ahead of the the Super Bowl crowds.

Today we are giving DiMartino’s Muffulettas a try for lunch. It came up in our research as a recommended spot to eat here on the Westbank. I have to be honest, it was a little disappointing. The bread was stale and hard and way over priced.

The girls shared a catfish plate which was decent but you can definitely find a much better place in the city at their prices.

Look at that burger patty. It is as dry and tasteless as it looks. I guess what I am trying to say is, don’t eat there. Maybe we should have gotten muffulettas.

With only a couple of days left here in New Orleans, we did not waste time and drove back across the bridge into town. Although the plan today is not heading into French Quarters to spend our day. We are taking the kids to City Park. Ava remembers from our last trip that we went to a little place there called ‘Storyland’ and was very excited to go back.

Mila of course did not remember a thing. She was much too little and was riding in the Ergobaby carrier the whole time like Luka is today.

Storyland charges a nominal entrance fee and isn’t really that big. There is a separate amusement park area adjacent to it that has rides but it was under construction this time so we didn’t get to go.

This is the one thing here that stuck in Ava’s memory as a 3 year old back in 2010. A dragon slide where you get to slide down on the fire.

Ava was much more timid than Mila last time, and we had to give her a fair amount of encouragement to try it. Mila on the other hand is fearless. Most of that has to do with having a big sister leading the charge.

“BONZAI!!!!!!”

Luka did make it out of his carrier for a few exciting moments. Like riding on the cow jumping over the moon. Good night cow, good night moon, good night mush and good night old lady whispering hush.

After our day at City Park, we couldn’t resist the lure of beignets in French Quarters so we decided to make a brief stop for a snack at Cafe du Monde before going back across the river.

Actually, we are hoping to meet a friend here. As some of you might know by now, we use to own a modern tear drop trailer called the T@B before we bought our Airstream. There were not very many of them around and back in 2009, a young couple took a cross country trip in one and documented their adventures on their blog. The blog is no longer available but some archives are it can be found through the WayBackMachine.

This little guy is Mister. He is Katie’s baby. Katie has been a social media friend of ours for many years but we have never met in person. She recently made the move to New Orleans from the Northeast and we took the opportunity of our visit to finally meet her in person.

It’s always cool when internet friends become real life friends. We are all little older and the girls have doubled in size but we all still have serious cases of wanderlust. If anyone is intrigued what living in French Quarters looks like these days, go check out Katie’s blog.

Tomorrow we will check out of Bayou Segnette finally and start heading further west. Just in time before the Super Bowl crowd floods the city.

over and out,
dan