Felix’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar

739 Iberville St, New Orleans

First night in the city we went here.  We’d gone to Acme, and a friend had told us that Felix’s was a lot better and less likely to have to wait in a long line.  He was right!

Char-grilled oysters were SOOOO good!  OMG!  Even Gabe who doesn’t like seafood in general, and oysters specifically, loved them.  And of course the raw ones were good too.  Nice and fresh!  Blackened gator tastes like chicken.  This was probably the first time we’d had it without it being in something else.  Normally, you don’t get just one bite of pure gator.  But this time, it was all gator, and it left us wondering why we were spending so much money on chicken.  lol  Hamburgers are huge!  Right about the size of a salad plate.  The étouffée was ok.  But I’m not typically a big étouffée eater anyways.  Fried catfish platter was also really big.  I think it came with 8-10 catfish filets on top of a mountain of fries.  I didn’t try it, but Gavin said it was really good.

Definitely going back next time we’re in NOLA.  Loved it!

Crowne Plaza, NOLA airport

We stayed in this hotel for five days because my husband had a class he needed to take.  It’s northwest of NOLA, in Kenner.  First, the good.  Outdoor swimming pool and spa.  Pool is long enough to do laps in, if you don’t mind the weirdly cold water (in the south, by mid-June, outdoor pools are too hot to swim in…..this pool is freezing).  The dinner menu is actually pretty decent.  Hot wings, Blue crab bisque, and cakes were all good.  Hotel looks new, nicer beds, dressers, sinks, etc.  Decent price for being an airport hotel.

Now the bad, which is, I’m afraid, a much longer list.  Breakfast is awful and pretty overpriced.  A buffet, which is just what you’d expect from any cheap hotel free breakfast, is a whopping $15.  I passed and tried the eggs benedict.  The bread was dry and over cooked, the ham wasn’t very good quality, and the sauce didn’t taste like much of anything, let alone the lemony-buttery-yolky goodness that it should’ve been.

There are no fridges or microwaves in the rooms.  If I had planned on cooking this week, I wouldn’t have needed the microwave.  And we brought a cooler, so whatever.  But, on this trip I pre made freezer meals, thinking that I didn’t want to cook with homeschooling and a bit of sight seeing.  We could then just dish up the defrosted meal and microwave it quickly.  We thought about our options…going to another hotel, upgrading to a suite (they don’t have microwaves either), and in the end, I went to Walmart and bought a microwave.  We figure we will need one soon anyways because we are turning a second laundry room in our house into a kitchenette.  But I would’ve preferred to not have to buy one anyways.

TV channels are limited for what is standard in most hotels these days.  WIFI for general browsing is free, but if you are going to want to do anything with any sort of media, you’ll have to pay for it.  This is becoming common with larger, nicer hotels, especially in downtown areas.  But this really is a mid to lower priced hotel.

The setup of the hotel as a whole is awkward at best.  Elevators everywhere, but there’s only one that actually takes you to your room.  You have to figure out which one that is.  And then once you’re there, it’s a treasure hunt trying to find your way back out.  Most hotels’ hallways all look the same.  But most assume you haven’t been roaming the halls for years and try to make it as simple as possible.  Enter elevator.  Push button.  Arrive at floor.  Follow arrows either right or left to your room.  To get to our room, we have to walk almost all the way down the large hallway, then make a left where it would seem to be just rooms, take that elevator up to the third floor, and once you’re there, you see it only lets out on 8 rooms.  If we were in another room on the same floor, we’d use one of several other elevators to get there.  Finding the pool was awkward as well.  And since we originally found it from the lobby, trying to get back to our room was another adventure.  My daughter left the room when we first got here to use the downstairs bathroom, and we all got lost trying to find her.

Also, the towel rack, you know, for DRY towels, is located INSIDE the shower.  It seems like someone set out to try to make this hotel as unnecessarily complicated as possible.

Would I stay here again?  Doubtful.  Honestly, we were pretty close to bringing the rig for this trip, but in the end we figured the company is paying for the hotel and a food voucher (we didn’t know the voucher would barely cover a continental breakfast).  I’d rather stay in the rig and have Gabe drive the extra distance to go to his class, or stay in a hotel I liked better and just pay for it myself.

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Note: We were currently staying in this hotel when I wrote this blog post (mostly so I wouldn’t forget when we got home.)  The manager found me a few days later and asked about the breakfast situation.  I explained that we had tried many things and most were pretty good, but the Benedict left a lot to be desired.  He gave me two free breakfast buffets.  So we got to eat a buffet breakfast (much like any you’d see at a Comfort Inn) for slightly less money.

Since we ended up trying many more things, let me also add that their desserts are fantastic!  Their filet was seasoned very well and it was good.  But the sauce was almost tasteless.  It didn’t bother us too much because the steak itself was so good.  Maybe this hotel just has a problem with sauces.  Also, we tried the seared Ahi, and it was old fish.  Yuck.

Pharmacy Museum

THE PHARMACY MUSEUM IN NOLA

We’d missed seeing this when we came to NOLA in December.  So I was very excited about finally getting a chance to see it this time around.  It’s a small museum with two floors, maybe a total of 2000 sq ft.  It has a nice courtyard in the back that is beautifully landscaped and is very lush.

There are tons of interesting things to look at in this museum.  Despite it’s size, it’s got A LOT to look at.  We saw everything from ancient reading glasses to heroin vials, childbirth forceps to tonsil removers.  It was a bit gruesome in that way.  But in others, I really enjoy learning about what the building blocks were that led us to what we have now.  And I comforted myself with the knowledge that the people who had to use those instruments were often on heroin, cocaine, alcohol, or some mixture that is certainly not advisable.  So they probably didn’t feel anything, including fear. 

Homewood Suites, NOLA

Homewood Suites in NOLA

We stayed there two nights while Gabe was taking a class for work.  It was sort of a break in the middle of a long tent camping trip, and the kids acted like they’d died and gone to heaven!  We got a two bedroom/ two bathroom suite at $220/night.  It included breakfast and dinner, plus the suite itself has a small kitchen.  So it would be very easy to end up saving money by staying here versus going to a cheaper hotel that doesn’t give you cheaper ways to eat.  The location was great, we were about 5 blocks from the French Quarter and so we didn’t have to drive in our car the whole time we were there.

The dinners were what you’d expect.  Spaghetti.  Hotdogs and chili.  And with as nice of décor as the hotel had, it was odd to be eating hot dogs in their dining room.  But, dinner was also served with either soda, beer, or wine.  So, I guess that’s my type of place.  Nice furnishings, staff that remembers your name, and hot dogs with wine!