From Panama City, we once again drove well into the night because my dad was in New Orleans on a missions trip helping with hurricane relief and we wanted to make it there before he left. We got to meet up with him on his last day there and spent the whole day seeing New Orleans with him.
There are a lot of things about my dad that I love and I hope I've inherited from him. One of them is his love to travel and see other cultures. Another is his ability to adapt to different cultures. For example, my dad had only been in New Orleans for a week and by the time we got there he was showing us around, explaining the history, and taking us to all the locals' favorite places as if he had been living there his whole life. 
So our tour began with the outdoor markets in New Orleans where they sell everything from clothes to jewelry to spices to paintings to creepy voodoo things to cell phone chargers. 
From there we went to Cafe Du Monde for beignets and fake coffee. Now for those who aren't already aware of the coffee situation in Louisiana, I must explain. Even though you order coffee from their menu, it's not actually coffee. It's chicory. And for those who don't know what that is, it's a root that was used as a coffee substitute during WWII when everyone was on rations. 
But after the war when the rest of America went back to drinking good, old coffee, Louisiana decided that they liked chicory better and continued to drink it. Thus when us Seattlites first took a sip of it, we just thought it was a really crappy cup of coffee. But no, it's not actually coffee at all and they didn't even bother to tell us!
Anyhow! From there we took a ferry across the Mississippi and saw lots of pretty paddle wheel boats.
After that we spent a good chunk of time just walking around the French Quarter. This was my favorite area! All the buildings are built in French style, obviously, with long, skinny windows and doors, shutters and balconies. Also every building was different in some way, from their ornate balconies to the bright colors of the houses. 
They made me want to just sit on a chair with a good cup of coffee and have long conversations with strangers. We loved listening to the birds there too! Unlike Seattle where we just have ugly crows and seagulls, New Orleans is full of small birds like bluebirds, hummingbirds and finches that sing beautiful songs while you walk by them. The best way I could describe the French Quarter is that it was very charming. 
There were also bananas growing in trees above us as we were walking around! It was really hard not to steal one... But we didn't. A friend of ours wrote to us that music is the DNA of New Orleans and we could definitely see what he meant! Literally every where you go, there are people just sitting on a street corner, or performing for an outdoor cafe, playing a saxophone. It added to the charm of the city and I couldn't believe how talented some of these people are. One group of high school kids just playing in a park sounded better than many professional jazz bands I've heard. 
Our last stop of the day was a huge park that my dad described as the Central Park of New Orleans. It felt like it with it's huge green fields and little jungles that you could stumble on, filled with tropical sounding birds. After that we went to dinner with my dad's missions team and I would just like to say that I don't understand how the people in the South can live off of the food they do. Instead of having sides like salads, carrots or that sort of thing like other places do, their sides are macaroni and cheese, potato salad, coleslaw. The only vegetables we saw were deep fat fried. They did have a salad but I didn't see a single other person in the restaurant order one. And they put gravy on everything! It was unbelievable! But I will admit that their sweet potato fries were incredible!
We didn't end up seeing Burbon Street, which is arguably what New Orleans is most well known for, but we didn't mind at all. We still got to experience the Southern charm of the city and spent a wonderful day with my dad.
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