Celebrity Equinox Jazz Fest cruise 4/24-5/5 Photo Review

Anyone familiar with Baltimore's Inner Harbor should recognize this facility we also spotted in New Orleans:

The battlefield visit was somewhat lackluster and took amini hike just to get to. They pulled up to the dock and you had todescend off the boat via one ramp, up another ramp and across abridge, then walk across the top of a hillside just to get to stairsthat led down to the grounds where we met the ranger.

The "mansion"

We were given a time frame to be back giving about 45minutes to tour the battlefield but were warned not to try and walkthe road leading to the cemetery because it would take too long toget back. The ranger gave a short introductory speech about thebattlefield and the mansion on the grounds but once he pointed outthe piles of fire ant hills all around where we were standing, Idon't think a single person was paying attention to his words. Dadand I elected to wander over to check out the “mansion” but itturned out to be about 3 empty rooms. It turns out the museum itselfwas up this long winding road so we made the trek. I'm pretty surewhen they figured out how much time to budget for the battlefieldvisit, they allotted 90% of that time to walking to the museumbecause once you got there, it was basically a single room with ahandful of displays set up in a circle. And of course, the customarygift shop.

The guy in the blue shirt and hat to the right of the ranger was our narrator on the boat:

Picture isn't great but I thought it was too funny how one of the cannonballs from the "Lift a cannonball" interactive display had been essentially "lifted" from the premises.

The outside of the actual museum:

The long walk back on the boat and a couple refreshinglycold water bottles purchased from the bar on board later, we nowchose to sit on the bench facing the starboard side. Partly becauseby the time we'd done all that walking and climbed up the stairs tothe top outside level of the boat, I was going to take the first seatI came across.

The Louisiana state flag:

The New Orleans city flag:

It worked out perfectly though because it was a quietserene place to just sit and watch the water while our guidetransformed from funny guy to the most dramatic passionatestoryteller of what the days were like leading up to, during, andshortly after Hurricane Katrina wreaked her havoc on New Orleans. Hebroke everything down into a day by day account that includedpersonal references to being separated from his own family members.He does warn before he starts that once he begins the HurricaneKatrina story, it does get intense and may not be comforting to hearfor anyone who may want to head inside the lower level where thestory won't be broadcast. He also asked that everyone be respectfulduring the story and not be loud or boisterous.

A parochial high school that is still not open after Hurricane Katrina - the blue lines on the roof are shredded remnants of the blue tarps they put on roofs to try and save buildings:

What a lovely form of "graffiti" to spot as we got closer to the end of the ride:

And of course I couldn't resist the view as we docked:

We returned around 4:30PM and decided to explore theRiverwalk Outlet Mall on our way back to the ship because I'd readthat the mall has their own Cafe Du Monde franchise.

We got our order of beignets to go and headed upstairsto check out the shops hoping to find a New Orleans port shirt forDad. He decided after browsing for a little while that he'd ratherwait and see if he could find something better while in town thefollowing days.

We found some interesting stores in this mall like "It'Sugar" which featured huge sizes of treats like this:

And cereal box sizes worth of your favorite fruity candies:

Another shop I could probably spend all day in was Popcorn Bistro - they had everything from salt & vinegar to wedding cake flavored popcorn combinations. Someone should probably have kept me from finding out that they ship to my home. We ended up grabbing small bags of Bacon Cheddar and Ranch flavors only to leave them sitting in the shopping bag on our coffee table until we packed them to fly home.

Ready to head back to the ship, we followed the signsthat said “to cruise ships” that led us all the way to the end ofthe food court on the highest level. We stepped outside onto theterrace that faced our ship and soon realized that there was nostairs leading down to street level. We headed back inside the foodcourt and asked the first employee we saw about getting out of themall but they just shrugged their shoulders. Remember our time in KeyWest when I wrote about making sure you look up as well as at eyelevel? We'll soon find out in the next few days report how we couldhave saved ourselves a lot of walking and confusion! The only otheroption we could think to do was backtrack and we walked inside themall down to the main level and headed out the first exterior door wefound. We were now officially outside of the mall but soon ran intoanother problem! Security fencing had been set up blocking offwaterfront walkers from following the water's edge all the way to theship! We ended up having to walk back around to the front of the mallwhere we'd entered after the boat ride, then all the way around theother side past the Hilton hotel and the police station via CanalStreet, and finally back up the short side of the convention centerto enter the security checkpoint building.

Checked back onto the ship with no line and quickly wentto our cabin to try the now cold beignets by spreading them out on anapkin on our coffee table. The pastries were so dried out that theyrepelled most of the powdered sugar which ended up on everything fromthe napkin, to the table, to the floor. We actually ended up tossinghalf the order we purchased. I joked to Dad that we should leave thistrail of “white powder” across the coffee table and see if oursteward Jose finally takes notice. Don't worry anyone who may betaking offense at my last comment, we did indeed clean it up as bestwe could and thankfully no security forces came knocking on our doorlater that evening. As I mentioned before, all the littletransgressions from our cabin staff tends to add up. Like our firstround of laundry taking 3 days to return, finally only doing sobecause we asked about it. The dirty plates from food we'd bring backfrom the buffet or glasses from our drinks would sit untouched untilwe started literally stacking them in the bar sink. We never had anymenus left in our cabin, and our daily delivery of canapes came twiceout of the 11 days. Our cabin was always late getting serviced andwe'd discover random things like parts of the towel set would havebeen taken without getting replaced.

Since we had purposefully omitted scheduling a specialtyrestaurant reservation for tonight, we headed down to Luminae to trythem for dinner for the first time this cruise.

Our little amouse bouche had goat cheese piped inside:

I tried the infamous Raspberry Fizz drink for the firsttime.

Dad got to enjoy his personal melon plate appetizer. I chose to order from the main dining room menu and gotthe broccoli and cheese soup which they poured over a little crostiniin the bowl once it arrived at the table.

Dad got the roast chicken from the Luminae menu and madea special request for mashed potatoes and carrots on the side sincehe didn't like the vegetable description that came with the chicken.

My main entree was the penne primavera.

A little pina colada flavored palate cleanser:

For dessert Dad went with the chocolate tart and I wentwith the blueberry ricotta cheesecake. I don't normally go forblueberry desserts but this was tasty.

Realized as we came back to our cabin that the libraryhad been roped off and drop cloths laid on the floor. We checked tofind the other side also roped off and soon heard the sound of powertools. Wasn't until we were heading back down in the elevator a shortwhile later that I noticed the source of the sound was a guyreplacing the window panel in the sloped ceiling.

During our elevator ride, the elevator stopped on a deckand a man walked up to enter but he gets there just a couple secondstoo late and the doors start to close again. He sticks out his arm tostop the doors and unfortunately, it's the hand that is holding hisfull wine glass. The doors don't stop until they bump his arm whichsends red wine sloshing onto the elevator floor and all over hishand. He, in his possibly on his 3rd glass state, backsaway from the spill like it's going to bite him and proceeds to standup against me in the back of the elevator. For the rest of the ride,he shakes out his now sticky with wine hand completely oblivious tothe fact that he's all but using my shirt as a towel standing soclose. We arrive at his deck first and he just saunters out with theremainder of his wine glass. The one other guy in the elevator and Ijust shake our heads in disbelief as we continue the rest of the waydown. We did make a point of warning the people who barely let us offbefore barging into the elevator for their ride to watch out for thespill. Thankfully none of us were carrying drinks as I'm sure thosepeople thought we'd been the ones to spill and bail.

Our evening entertainment for tonight was playing MinuteTo Win It against the officers in the Entertainment Court hosted byAshley. I must say, the whole play against the officers aspect is acute idea but it gets to be like back to back cruisers playing triviagames. They see the same questions and answers every week!

Sizing up the competition:

The first task required wearing a hat with tea bagshanging from it on strings and getting both tea bags to stay on topof the hat without using your hands. The officer went first and wewatched him swirl just his head around in a tight circle until thestrings were wound together. Then with a sharp flick up of his head,the now double weighted strings flew up on top of the hat and stayedthere. Dad got drafted into being the passenger to do this task and Iexplained the tactic the officer used. Dad repeated the same tacticand beat the officer's time. The next task was one we'd actually seenboth on the TV show and used on cruise ship battle of the sexes stylegames, incrementally balancing items like sticks or pencils on theback of your hand and then tossing them up and catching the wholepile in the same hand. I got drafted for this task and Iended up sending more pencils to the floor than ever made it into myhand whereas the officer did her round with ease. Ashley gave Dad andI both decks of cards anyway. Rule #1 of picture taking, take thelens cap off first! Dad thought he'd take advantage of my being busyplaying my round and sneak a couple pics of the gal who is usuallybehind the camera. Instead, he spent that whole minute trying tofigure out why the camera was displaying an error message saying thatthe subject was too dark!

The last task involved holding a roll of toilet paper onjust two fingers and you had to get it fully unraveled using solelythose fingers.

It turns out that the officer participating in thisround was the housekeeping manager so Ashley joked that it would betheir job to pick up the pile of unraveled toilet paper. The officerresponded by tossing the pile of paper all over Ashley. Ashley triedto run for cover as the passenger joined in with his pile too.

Showing off the passenger's winning roll:

Potato guy is still not impressed:

What's this? A Martini Bar that isn't so crowded you can't even see the bar?

We were still feeling hungry so we stopped back at thebuffet for some late night pizza. Asked for a soda for each of usfrom the bar waiter and he also insisted on seeing both cards. An early start loomed ahead for us the next morning and I was among the masses of passengers who developed coughs, colds, and congestion so we drug our weary bodies to bed.

Saturday, April 29th

One of the best travel tips I've come across is to bring every kind of over the counter medication you could need as the ship store will cost you an arm and a leg and a visit to the medical center for a stomachache just from overeating could cost you the rest of your body. I have learned over years of exhausting all day excursions in the heat triggering headaches to take it one step further.

I'm sure everyone has seen those little plastic pouches that sometimes come attached to a new shirt or jacket holding a set of extra buttons. We save those baggies and over time have purchased a pack of 100 from Ebay for around $3.

Dad uses them to portion out each day's worth of his prescription medication when our longer trips call for more days worth of pills than the little weekly pill holders allow. On port days, I take one of the bags and fill it with one or two doses of aspirin and antacid and keep it in my pocket. It creates no more bulk than keeping your cruise card in your pocket and everything is contained. No having to cart around the big pill bottle or trying desperately to find that random pill now covered in fuzz at the bottom of your bag.

Now back to your regularly scheduled review -

Beginning to think that part of our issues with Arsimand Jose is that we're used to writing notes for our steward onthings we need while we're out for the day, i.e. a door is stickingor please bring extra towels, and they are taken care of when thesteward comes in to service the cabin in the morning. I know Arsimhas his own direct phone number but we never felt anything was superurgent to bother calling directly. A day or two before, we'd beenleft another plate of shrimp in our cabin and I opted not to eat itafter not liking the cocktail sauce on that first plate. Left a noteon the bar counter addressed to Arsim asking that he stop the shrimpdelivery and just stick with the cookies, cheese/crackers, or evensome fruit as most of the time I ate just the grapes off the cheeseplate. Came back to the cabin later that day to find untouched shrimpdish gone and note gone. Fast forward to today, we run into Arsim inMichael's Club and he assures us that he'll be sending a fresh plateof shrimp to the cabin later. We fill him in on our desire to have nomore shrimp and he is totally surprised. Guess Jose never bothered topass along the note.

Early morning today on this second day in New Orleans aswe booked the ship excursion called Grand City Tour. The tourrequired meeting up at 8:15AM so no time for Luminae this morning. Ihad planned ahead and grabbed a banana from the buffet last night soI could have breakfast on the run. Dad got a big kick out of how ourexcursion tickets read “expect loud crowd.” We knew going in thatthis would be a generic, run of the mill, see an overview of the citytour that would be popular. Everyone was split into groups for busesbased on when we arrived to the meeting point. We ended up as group2/bus 2. There were at least 3 buses each with their own guide asthey had just started handing out #3 stickers when they called forour group. We boarded what turned out to be a packed bus, not themost comfortable when you're two fluffy people but we made do.

Our guide was from Germany and she either was seriouslynervous or was totally unprepared because every other word she saidwas “um.” In attempting to point out a statue during the drive,her exact sentence was “This um um um statue um um um...” Inaddition it felt like we'd been demoted back to kindergarten the wayshe reacted to fellow passengers perceived misbehavior. Someoneeither decided to move their seat or was coming back from thebathroom and she yelled at them to hurry up and sit down. When westopped for traffic right outside of the original Cafe Du Monde andeveryone started sharing their excitement about seeing the landmark,our guide took offense and kept trying to redirect everyone'sattention to the statue across the street. Her effort didn't work soshe resorted to ranting about how no one was listening to her.Several other times during the tour she would get ticked off atpeople who were chatting among themselves and chastise them forhaving such loud conversations causing a disruption for the “nicepeople who paid to hear ME speak, not you all.” A lot of thelandmark places she did bother to point out were along the lines ofdon't blink or you'll miss it because as soon as she named the place,she was telling the bus driver to move on. Didn't even try for manypictures during the ride because most of the view was of otherpassengers' heads.

When she started the tour, she mentioned that we'd have3 stops. 1st stop was to the St. Louis Cemetery and wewere given the option of getting off to take pictures and explore.Several passengers started to wander around but as soon as our guidemade it off the bus, she was yelling at them to come back foreveryone had to stay with her as she led us to specific gravemarkers. 10-15 minutes of being led around the cemetery later, we sawabout 8 tombstones. On the plus side, our short walk had theme musicprovided by Maroon 5's “Moves Like Jagger” that could be heardfrom nearby where the Jazz Fest bands were rehearsing.

When your group has seen so much death, you have to start listing names on the side:

An example of a tomb whose family did not have as much money as others nearby:

The only sign of personalization I noticed on someone's grave marker:

Once a priest, always a priest:

Back on the bus we went like kids lining up from recessand we were driven to a park that seemed to have everything fromtheme park rides to playgrounds. When we reached the park, our guideannounced “Here is our 2nd and final stop.” Umm, whathappened to we'll be making 3 stops? The park had a popularrestaurant called the Morning Call Cafe and we were encouraged to trytheir beignets.

The wait staff was dressed up like old timey sodafountain employees and I'm pretty sure our waitress used at least 5“honey” or “sugar” when referring to us. We were instructedby our guide to head to a table where someone will come take yourorder, don't wait in line at the counter clogging up the passageway.

Dad grabbed us a table and by the time I returned fromthe restroom, he'd ordered some beignets and 2 chocolate milks. Yep,no café ole for this crew! The beignets came plain and we figured outthat each table had a shaker of powdered sugar so you could add yourown to the amount of your liking. Does this count as my having mademy own beignets now? These beignets were much better, mostly becausethey were warm and fresh!

With time left after eating before our school marm toldus to be back on the bus, we browsed the cafe gift shop and pickedout a New Orleans themed cookbook for our neighbor to say thanks forthat ride to the airport. Dad also looked at the shirts but didn'tfind anything he liked.

Even small horses...umm I mean dogs, love beignets!

Some sort of self described Live Action Role Play group that looked more like slow motion kung fu movie was practicing their art in the park:

Perhaps they were warding off the cast of the Thriller music video doing Tai Chi nearby:

Oh Spanish Moss, we salute you!

Our 3rd stop it turns out was more of a buspull over as our guide pointed out Lake Pontchartrain. Our guideoffered for anyone who wanted a picture to “go ahead but get yourpic and get right back on” for we apparently didn't have much timeleft before we had to be back at the ship. Only about 4 people bravedher wrath by stepping out and I'm pretty sure one of them just did soto smoke. At our previous stop, a couple people had asked the guideto drop them in the French Quarter rather than go all the way back tothe ship. Once we were heading back toward the ship, the guidementioned the request to everyone and asked for those people to raisetheir hands so she knew who was getting off. Apparently a lot morepeople had had enough and the group of 2 who'd asked grew to be abouthalf the bus raising their hands. Knowing that we still had a couplehours before our planned French Quarter tour, we decided to stay onthe bus. Once back at the ship, our guide gave the usual spiel aboutshowing your appreciation with a tip and then nearly blocked the waywith her hand out and a smile as we stepped off the bus.

Our original plans for this afternoon was a tour of theFrench Quarter via Free Tours by Foot. We had made reservations fortheir 2PM tour. By the time we made it back to the ship though, wefelt that we'd already seen the bulk of what we'd see on this tourand decided we'd be better off spending the time relaxing. Since itwas a free until you tip at the end tour, we didn't feel so bad aboutchanging our plans. As it was, we didn't even get the expectedconfirmation from the assigned guide until later that evening.

Instead we grabbed a quick lunch at the buffet whereonce again we were asked for both cards in order to get drinks. Dadtried an Amstel Light beer but didn't like it.

When we had gotten off the bus earlier right by thesecurity checkpoint, we noticed that there was elevators leading intothe mall right as you walk out from the ship area. Determined tofigure out our confusion from trying to get out of the mallyesterday, we decided to use the extra time to take those elevatorsup into the mall and see where they lead us too so we can finallyknow where we should have gone for a much easier return to the ship.

When we first headed out this morning, I noticed that we had a new visitor in New Orleans today.

The difference between the Julia pier and the Erato pier:

Our Solstice deck lined up perfectly with their funnel:

Happy Embarkation Day Triumph passengers!

I liked the spooky look of this view:

Here's where my earlier comment about looking up andaround as well as down comes back into play because it turns out thatthose elevators take you right up into the food court! We had walkedpast them to head onto the terrace thinking there was steps to walkdown!

While we were on the upper level, we took advantage ofbeing close to the Mardi Gras themed store and returned to find ashirt for Dad. We finally found one that met all his color and designcriteria. The woman checking us out at the store was impressed thatwe'd come into town “on that big ship.” With still a couple hoursto kill, we headed back to Popcorn Bistro and admired the huge tubsof everything from dessert flavors, potato chip flavors, and comicalflavors like LSU Tiger Bait. My thought was to enjoy watching one ofthe movies during some down time in our cabin with our flavoredpopcorn but it turns out that our bags sat unopened the whole rest ofthe trip and we ended up packing them.

With our shirt mission complete and our curiositysatisfied, we headed back to the elevators in the food court to makeour way back to the ship. We discovered a small group of peoplestanding by the elevators that didn't seem to be coming. One of theguys pushed the call button and it lit up only to go right back out.A couple ladies who had walked up to also take the elevators made acomment about how they were trying to get downstairs because theywere “on that big ship over there” and I think it took a littlewind out of their sails when we replied, “yeah, us too.” Finallysomeone walked 10 feet away and asked the guy at the informationbooth who'd been watching us all standing here and comes back toreport that the elevators are broken. Huh? We just rode up in themnot 30 minutes prior. As it turns out, the doors that are at yourback when you face the doors leading out to the terrace, lead to araised walkway that in turn leads to a set of stairs. The stairs leadyou to the streetcar tracks that are just before where the elevatorwould have let us out by the security checkpoint. So we ended updiscovering two alternative ways to get back to the cruise terminalthat would have saved us half a mile of walking the day before!

Once back on board, we stopped in at Michael's Club tocheck out tonight's dinner menus. The poor young man who'd beenassigned to tend bar in the club was so bored and lonely that hejumped at the chance to have someone to chat with. We had a niceconversation and soon turned to head back to our cabin to stow awayour purchases. As we were leaving, the bartender actually rushedafter us and said “Aww, you're leaving?!” Arsim came into theclub just then and tried to get us to stay for afternoon tea but wedeclined. It turns out that the suite butlers take turns hostingafternoon tea at Michael's Club and today was Arsim's turn.

How would you like to have this job of being harnessed in while you clean the dust left behind by the guy who'd fixed the window?

The new window's (bottom left) patch job:

Dropped our shopping bags in the room and I could hearthat balcony calling my name. I'm lucky in that we don't have to gowith the cheapest cabin on cruises but honestly, I don't think Icould sail in anything less than a balcony cabin. Hanging out on thebalcony is the only time I let myself sit still and just be while ona cruise. While some people go to places like malls and people watch,I headed out to the balcony to people watch the people on the mallterrace as they gasped in awe at our ship and took selfies with theEquinox in the background. I poured myself a refreshing bottle offruit punch flavored vitamin water into a tall wine glass (as you'llrecall we had limited dish choices) and stood out there sipping mydrink and smiling at being on the cool side of the equation in thisinstance. I can only imagine what those people thought seeing me onmy grand balcony sipping a nice red “wine.”

I felt like we needed another picture so enjoy this random shot of an empty foyer:

We decided to skip the Beatles themed trivia and insteadreported just as it was ending for the 4PM regular afternoon trivia.The Beatles trivia was being run by DJ Sasha and as we walked in Iheard him telling the small group gathered that he'd like to do60s/70s music trivia next. When he announced at 3:50PM that he'd bestarting the music trivia, Dad thought he was going to try and fit inanother trivia before the 4PM one. Several of our secondary triviateam members that we joined for this trivia balked when DJ Sashaexplained that this was going to be the topic for the 4PM trivia. DJSasha fired back by giving us a hard time about having more than 6people despite us pointing out that only 4 of us sharing the couchwere still planning to play given the new topic. DJ Sasha, in histrue get this over with quick way of running activities, only played13 songs and our little group of 4 managed to get them all correct.DJ refused to believe us when we told him our score and headed overto give all the tickets to another team that got 13. We protested soDJ asked if we really had gotten them all. One of the 4 who did playthought he'd be funny and answer DJ by saying “no we got 15 out of13!” DJ took it all to be a joke and went back to handing thetickets to the other team. I ran over and showed DJ our paper toprove we really did get everything correct as well. He reluctantlycame over and gave us tickets as well.

Perhaps setting a record for the most times we've beenoff and back on a ship while in port in a single day, we headed outright after trivia in an effort to find a cab to get us to the FrenchQuarter. We had booked (also directly with the company before wesailed) the 5 in 1 Haunted History tour. We originally scheduled thetour for 5PM with the expectation that we'd already be in the areawhen the Free Tours by Foot tour ended around 4PM. Their websiteoffers a discount code option so we were able to book 1 adult ticketat $20 (normally $25) and a senior rate ticket at $18. We picked thistour because it encompassed not only ghost and haunting stories butalso touched on voodoo saving us from trying to fit a separate voodoothemed tour into our 3 days in port. The instructions for the toursay to meet outside of Rev. Zombie's Voodoo Shop and it turns outthat while they're not affiliated with that shop at all, theirheadquarters is a little wooden door off to the side of the shop.When it was time to sign in for the tour, the three employees fromthe whole company came outside and set up a stool and sign in thestreet for people to come check in.

We had an interesting ride to get to the shop first.Several cabs were now lined up outside security ready for cruisepassengers to head into town for dinner at the restaurants and enjoythe bars. When we mentioned needing a cab, a woman walked up andoffered her cab. We asked which one it was and she made a big fussover associating her red dress with the one red van cab. As westarted to drive away from the port, Dad noticed that this womanhadn't bothered to turn on her meter. She was a little uncertainabout where to find this Rev. Zombie's Voodoo shop and just drovearound the French Quarter for a bit. I spotted the sign and shepulled over. Despite never having turned on the meter, she declaredthat the fare for this 10 minute ride was $16. Rather than fight, wepaid the fare and got out.

We had allowed for so much time to get there that wearrived too early to even check in. To kill time we walked around theneighboring blocks and did our own walking tour of the FrenchQuarter. There were lots of people walking the streets drinking andsmoking and it was really starting to bother my allergies. Severalsmall groups of musicians were set up on street corners ranging fromthose with real instruments to those who used sticks on overturnedpaint buckets.

By the time we completed our sightseeing loop, the guyswere outside checking people in for the tour. We were still too earlyfor the tour itself so they suggested that we go take advantage ofthe 2 for 1 hurricane drink special. We declined in favor of browsingthe voodoo shop. Everyone was instructed to gather by 4:45PM acrossthe street from the Haunted History office. We ended up with a groupof around 21 people and since 99% of our tour was outside, several ofthem smoked and/or vaped their way through the tour. Yay for being onour feet for 1 ½ hours in the humidity while everyone around me wasseeing just how long I could go until their smoke brought on amigraine for me.

How close the two places are:

It was almost like dejavu from the morning tour when wemet our guide Lisa and her first words were to insist we always standeither as far back against the buildings or as far forward on thesidewalk as we could. We weren't allowed to walk in the street, siton anyone's porch, and heaven forbid we wander back and stand inbetween the wall and the curb. Lisa's mantra was “All our streetsare one way but we still look both ways before crossing.” We had torespect people's homes in that we couldn't risk blocking their doorsand the path for anyone else to walk on the sidewalk and get by ourgroup had to remain clear. At one point, a guy in our group steppedoff the curb to standing right next to it as he leaned on a streetlamp and Lisa yelled that he needed to keep his feet on the sidewalk.One of the younger guys on the tour had taken to sitting on the curbby then and he quickly drew his shoes back up onto the sidewalk tokeep from getting yelled at too which made us all laugh. While someof the stories Lisa shared were interesting, the tour was a littlewalking with a lot of standing around while she took 20 minutes todraw out the tale of that location. You could tell that several ofthe group was getting bored, despite having started the tour with arefreshing alcoholic beverage they'd grabbed before it started. Dadeven at one point about ½ hour in offered to grab a cab right nowand bail on the rest of the tour but I decided that I could put upwith the rest of the time.

These were known as Romeo spikes on the columns. They were called such because of the young men who would climb them to try and sneak into the young daughter's upstairs bedroom. Upon discovering that it was actually the father waiting for him at the top, Romeo would slide back down so fast, he'd become a Juliet.

A house used during the filming of Interview with a Vampire:

I admired all of the intricate metal work along the balconies:

At 6PM, Lisa gave everyone a break suggesting they go toLafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar to check out its reported haunting ofsuper cold bathrooms and replenish with the famous drink VoodooDaiquiri described by Lisa as “it's got purple in it.” We didhave a teenager with his family on the tour so after we hung out withthem just observing the outside of the bar, we headed to Lisa'smeeting point which was the coffee shop at the other end of theblock. She spent the break time hanging out with an iced coffee andtexting on her phone. Lisa jokingly referred to the coffee shop asthe place “where it would be easier to see me leave you behind ifyou're not back by 6:15PM.” Almost everyone was back before sheeven finished her drink. As we stood outside making small talk withthe rest of the group, one of the guys joked that their next stopneeded to be a haunted foot massage place.

Beads still hung from the railings:

And adorned lampposts:

When Springtime, Easter, and Mardi Gras all occur at the same time:

Other homeowners took a less traditional approach to decorating:

These carriage horses were so familiar with the route that the driver would routinely turn to talk to the riders and then remember she was supposed to be guiding the horse:

After the break, Lisa led us to a courtyard through asmall alleyway that was shared by residents in an apartment building.She claimed their company was the only people allowed to have a keyto the gate and lead tours here. Lisa told us the story of how theformer occupant of the upstairs corner apartment was a woman namedMamie who now haunts the courtyard. Lisa recounted stories of havingguide dogs with their owners on these tours and the dogs go fromquiet to barking and snarling when they enter the courtyard. Anothertale was that a woman on the tour had her sleeping baby in thestroller and the baby woke up screaming when they entered the yard.Lisa told Mamie to leave the baby alone and instantly the babystopped crying. I enjoy the world of the paranormal and realinvestigations and reports but something about the way Lisa wasplaying it up sounded so cheesy and phony. We were encouraged to takeas many photos as we liked for they wanted to see if we ended upcatching anything.

Mamie's room:

As we stood in the courtyard, Lisa revealed that she hasan ongoing bet with her two other coworkers where whomever gets themost good reviews between them on Trip Advisor gets a free drink.Lisa added that they always make a point of respecting Mamie's spaceand thank her for letting them be here before they leave. The tourended here leaving everyone to find their own way back to whereverand I had to chuckle when I heard one of the big tall guys comment ina high pitched quivering voice, “but we didn't say thank you toMamie!”

We quickly headed back out to the street though somegroup members stuck around to chat with Lisa.

A cab just happened tobe passing by so we flagged him down. He drove the long way back tothe ship chewing out the crazy drivers in the heavy traffic theentire way. This guy did properly run the meter and his total uponreturn was only $11 so we gave him an extra tip for being honestafter the shady driver we'd used earlier.

We rushed back to our cabin to change for dinner andthen went down to the Entertainment Court area for Musical Madness(The Rematch of the tv/movie theme trivia). There was more of aturnout tonight and one of the older gentlemen joked with Justin thathe was only part of the crowd gathered to play because they weregiving out free wine. Not to be out joked, Justin rushed away andbrought the guy back a bottle of the cheap ship wine. This time theprize was these nice simple black Celebrity Cruises shirts with a bigX on the front and a couple people nearly collided rushing to thechair. When the theme song to The Jeffersons came on, nobody made amove so I ran for it and won a shirt. After the game we asked Justinto exchange the medium shirt he gave me for a larger size and hebrought back two larger shirts so Dad could get one too.

Headed to dinner at Luminae where I decided to try theSpiced Berry Smash drink from the suggested cocktails list on themain dining room menu. Tried one sip and told Dad that I discoveredthe source of where they get the horrible taste of cough syrup from.

I think this was the amouse bouche of the evening:

Dad took my suggestion of trying the prosciutto andmelon appetizer as it's one we've tried in some shape or form on manycruises.

His entree was the Home-style Turkey with stuffing andgot some extra mashed potatoes because he didn't realize the dish hadsweet potatoes and regular mashed potatoes. He raved about this“Thanksgiving on a plate” entree for the rest of the meal!

Rather than get an appetizer, I asked for the gnocchi from the main dining room menu and the fettuccine with squid andshrimp from Luminae's menu. Enjoyed the gnocchi but the fettuccinehad a weird sauce all over everything and it overpowered the rest ofthe dish.

Headed off to visit the sweet young lady at the gelatocounter for dessert and decided to take it back to the cabin to eatsince the band playing in the foyer was way too loud to sit at CafeAl Bacio.

My eyes were bigger than my stomach (from clockwise: mint chocolate chip, dulce de leche, vanilla, and strawberry). By the time I got through the mint chocolate chip scoop I was too full so I took a sampler bite of each other flavor and left the rest to melt in our bar sink.

After we were done eating, we headed back to the SkyLounge to watch the Yes/No game show. Sat with a couple who'd neverheard of the game before and filled them in on how to play. The wifevolunteered her husband to play and Dad finally agreed to play toowhen he saw how few people volunteered. Justin's parents were on thissailing so he had his Dad come up to play as well. Justin was alittle more lenient as host than the hosts on our last Princesscruise who insisted that you can't say things like uh-huh or nope,and any other acceptable response you use has a limited shelf life of5 uses. For instance, if you chose to say “Correct” as youranswer to keep from saying “Yes” than they kept track on Princessto make sure you didn't use “Correct” too many times.

One of the guys on our last Princess cruise had thissmooth voice like a radio sports announcer and whenever asked aquestion, he would give a long drawn out answer to use up the timenot letting the hosts ask further follow up questions to try and triphim up. Dad took that same idea when he was called up as the lastcontestant and smooth talked his way through Justin's interrogationso well that Justin gave up and handed over the last two CelebrityCruises beach towels that he'd brought as prizes. I told Dad that wenext have to win a Celebrity Cruises themed suitcase to bring allthis stuff home.

I am enjoying your reports but I get the feeling you did not :)book the cruise for the "jazz part" or am I wrong?

I am enjoying your reports but I get the feeling you did not :)book the cruise for the "jazz part" or am I wrong?

That would be correct. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, we booked it for the unique itinerary it offered and the Go Best sale perks.

I was on the same cruise. When we took cabs the fares were $8 per person no matter how many people. The ride had to be within a certain perimeter. We took cabs to and from jazz fest and church on Sunday.

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Sunday, April 30th

Our final day in New Orleans and thanks to our includedinternet perk, we knew that the gray skies and humidity had finallyreached its limit with a forecast of 90% chance of storms. As luckwould have it, our last activity we planned to do on this day anyway,was visiting the National WWII Museum. When we woke up this morning,we discovered a new port buddy, the Carnival Dream here for theirroutine disembark/embark day.

We had booked tickets to see both the 10AM showing ofthe Beyond All Boundaries 4D movie and the 12:15PM submarineexperience known as Final Mission, each an extra $5/person on top ofthe ticket price ($26/adult and $22.50/senior) Opted out of breakfastyet again and headed off the boat at 9AM in search of a cab. It was asuper quick ride and only cost $8 for the two of us. Found out laterthat today's Jazz Fest concerts had been postponed until 3PM soeveryone in town for that changed gears and went to the museumresulting in a crowd that filled the entire space allotted for ticketlines. We were able to skip the long lines since we purchased aheadof time online and walked around the crowd to the will call line. Gottickets to hand in for the movie and Final Mission, and a dog tagstyle card that had a built in sensor so that you could swipe it onan interactive display throughout the museum and follow the story ofan assigned real life soldier. Rather than stickers, we were givenlittle metal clips to fold over the edge of our shirt collars to showthat we'd paid admission.

Here's all the rates broken down:

The bricks outside the museum were dedicated to soldiers:

The first stop as you leave the ticket line is to boarda life size replica of a train and watch a video presentation on howto use the interactive dog tag cards. We waited in line for the nextsession only to just miss the cut off when we made it to the front ofthe line. Dad asked the woman manning the door if we'd have time todo this and still make the 10AM movie and she said we'd be better offgoing to the kiosks outside the theater instead.

We rushed over to the theater which was in anotherbuilding of the museum and there was a large group of people waitingfor the show so we had to wait a bit to get to the kiosks.

When wewent to register, the process asks for a bunch of your personalcontact information but you can bypass that since the “continue”button lights up as soon as you confirm that you're over 13.

Dad listening to one of the recorded information stations while we wait:

Mysoldier was William Disanza, a merchant mariner along with hisbrother until his mother begged him to quit once his brother waskilled. William then joined the army instead and trained to work hisway up to being a man on the inside behind enemy lines.

When it was almost time for the movie to start, we wereall ushered into a small room that they filled to the brim beforerunning an introduction clip narrated by Tom Hanks.

I tried to snap some pictures to show how crowded it was but this was the best I got before getting told pictures weren't allowed:

Then we were directed into the theater itself which wasyour basic IMAX style setup. The large screen filled the front of theroom and during the show they had various props like tanks or signscome up from underneath the stage to go with the storyline. At onepoint, the nosecone of a fighter jet came down from the ceiling andmatched up with the wings portrayed on the screen during a battlescene. During a winter scene, fake snow descended from the ceilingover the heads of the audience and our seats were motorized to shakeand rattle to fit in with the action.

We then made our way into the museum exhibitsthemselves, each designed to look like you were really in the jungleor on the submarine like the soldiers had been.

Interesting fine touches to the exhibits like these personal story boards:

Soldier Mess Kit:

Norden Bombsight:

Handmade Crystal Radio Receiver used by a woman in occupied France to illegally listen to BBC radio broadcasts:

Gun cleaning tools: