N.O.L.A

Francesco decided that for his 30th birthday he wanted to go to New Orleans and do it up big. We are sure glad he did! Here are some (okay, a lot) of pictures from our vaca-reunion with some great San Diego folk. (All of these pictures are courtesy of Natalie and Desiree because our camera was having problems- I even included a couple from the night before our arrival, just because they are cute)

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Birthday boy and sis

Andrew missed him

I miss her!

First item on the agenda: eat some alligator

After dinner, we stopped at Coyote Ugly. Here is the whole gang:

The bartender taught us a stompAnd, of course, we had to visit Bourbon street
Cute Bourbon street pic:
Then, off to Karaoke! Natalie and Desiree are shakin it to Beyonce's single ladies (even though they aren't really single- but I was still excluded from the dance)

The birthday boy busted out some moves.

(My MJ moonwalk was not captured on camera... fortunately)

This was actually not my idea (it was my wayward husbands') but I embraced it:

fun, fun, fun

cute couple!

The original Forrest Gump park bench suit? We tourists like to think so

Drew, and some of the others, had never been to New Orleans before. So we checked out all the main stops like Jackson Square:

And, of course, had a beignet at Cafe du Monde

Some of us had the full beignet experience

On Saturday, we took a trolley to the Garden District

Lots of little shops and historic homes with N'awlins style wrought iron

and porches with Southern columns

Saturday night was the birthday celebration. We went to a restaurant-- blanking on the name-- something to do with Wolfgang Puck?? Anyway, it was yummy

Desiree and I shared some turtle soup:

My favorite guy

That night, we took off our beads and masks and decided to venture over to Frenchman street to see what the locals do for fun. We found a great jazz/blues band called Tuba Skinny :

We then found some street music and the fellas had to jive also, see?

Thanks for the great memories!