It’s hard to believe we left Costa Rica 9 days ago.
It was a little odd just locking the door in Atenas and getting on a plane with nothing other than the surplus items we were bringing back early. It was also odd walking in the door in Austin because everything was exactly as we left it. We both felt a little out of sorts that first evening, but by the time we woke up on Sunday morning it was like we never left.
Last week was a big week for Jill, she worked late Monday through Thursday to make sure that she could get face-to-face sessions with all of her clients before we disappear for another six weeks. I spent the week in the office catching up and supporting Scott in his first official board meeting as CEO (he was fantastic).
Friday marked five years since I tricked Jill into marrying me. It’s hard to believe we’ve packed so many fun adventures into five years. To celebrate we headed to New Orleans to meet Mia and Rich and our new friends the Quinns.
Our California contingent (the Moshers and the Quinns) had to scramble to get to New Orleans due to Southwest’s fleet of Max 8’s being grounded. They ended up taking a red-eye to Baton Rouge and then getting a driver to get them to New Orleans. They beat us by a couple of hours and were all napping when we got to our hotel. Jill booked us into The Old No. 77, which turned out to be a great hotel in a perfect location.
Knowing that Mia would come out of the gate strong and that we were too late to get a power nap in, we each grabbed a double latte at a cute coffee shop a block from The Old No. 77
Then Mia woke up and we were off!
The first thing we did was head for Galatoire’s for lunch. Well, technically, the first thing we did was have Sazerac’s (Jill had a G&T) at the bar in Galatoire’s while waiting for our table.
After a great lunch at Galatoire’s we strolled over to the Carousel Bar in the Monteleone Hotel. The rotating carousel bar was super crowded so Jill and I sat off to the side and just waved at everyone each time they rotated by our position.
After the Carousel Bar, we made our way to Bourbon Street. Turns out Rich has a little man crush on John Travolta from Urban Cowboy…
We spent a couple of hours on Bourbon Street. Everyone but Rich remembers those hours.
We went from Bourbon Street to the restaurant August for dinner. In a weekend of otherwise great dining experiences, August didn’t really answer the bell. Rich made the experience entertaining. He was running on fumes from lack of sleep earlier in the week and the red-eye. His final act before he fell asleep in his chair at the table was to tell our waiter that we wanted one of every appetizer. When there was some confusion over whether the wine cellar was the men’s room, I walked Rich back to the Old No. 77 and got him safely to his room. Then I went back and rejoined my party.
We adjourned from August and finished out the evening at the Old No. 77 bar, where Jill and I got to know Brian and Michele Quinn a little better. We like them a lot. Turns out Mia and Rich have decent taste in friends.
Jill and I were up early on Saturday, while the Moshers and the Quinns, being on Pacific time, slept in a little later. We took advantage of the alone time to take a crisp morning walk along the Mississippi River.
Rich secured us a brunch reservation at The Commander’s Palace on Saturday, which put us within staggering distance of the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
We thoroughly enjoyed our Commander’s Palace brunch and then we were off to watch the parade. More specifically Rich and I watched while the others in our party basically bathed in essence of the parade…
Parade going is hard damn work. So we stopped on our walk back to the hotel to get some cookies and vanilla milk at Willa Jean. That gave us enough energy to get back to the hotel, where we sat at the bar and drank until it was time to go drink at another location. We ended up at Latitude 29 a world-famous Tiki bar.
After Latitude 29 it was finally time for Cochon Butcher. I’d been hankering for a muffaletta since we got to New Orleans so it was an easy call for me to get a muffaletta. Jill got the Cubano. Mia was over-the-top excited to find a tub of pimento cheese in the cold case. Cochon did not disappoint!
We all waddled back to the hotel where we played Heads Up for a while before staggering off to bed.
Our plan was to head for Cafe du Monde on Sunday morning before hitting the World War II museum. When Jill and I got up we had a text from Southwest Airlines that our flight had been canceled. I called and got us booked on a flight that left New Orleans at 6:10AM today.
Jill and I both had a great attitude about the flight delay. We saw it as time to explore after the Moshers and Quinns headed for the airport.
We met Mia and Rich in the lobby Sunday morning and headed out. There’s a fantastic po boy and biscuit place called Mother’s that’s across the street from the Old No. 77. Every time we’d walked by it there was a line around the block. Mia had the idea to stop by Mother’s on our way to Cafe du Monde. Mia is a genius! While everyone else was shivering in line for Cafe du Monde we were munching on our pre-beignet snacks of black ham biscuits and po boys au jus with “debris.” We were the envy of everyone else in line!
After second breakfast we walked to Central Grocery to get one of their “original” muffaletettas to compare to Cochon. Then we swung by the hotel to drop off our muffaletta and headed for the World War II museum.
Within the last week, upon hearing that we were going to New Orleans two of our friends told us we absolutely could not miss it. I cannot recommend the WW II museum highly enough.
After the WW II museum we rendezvoused with the Quinns back at the hotel. We laid out a spread on one of the lobby tables and did a side by side comparison of Cochon’s muffaletta and the Central Grocery muffaletta. The consensus was that Central Grocery was the hands down winner.
Mia and Jill then called in a to-go order of three po boys at Mother’s so that everyone would have food on the airplane (and Mia would have lunch today in California). Something got lost in translation on the order, because when they unpacked the bag back at the hotel there were no fewer than TEN po boys in it!
Jill and I saw everyone into the cab. What a great time we had with the Moshers and the Quinns! This New Orleans trip had all the hallmarks of a classic Mosher vacation — we did enough stuff that everything kind of runs together in my head, nobody left their wingman, and we were all wondering how we were going to recover before Monday morning.
After seeing everyone off, Jill and I ended up at the Old Absinthe House for an afternoon cocktail.
We made a fun afternoon out of our time alone together, got a pizza, and then headed back to our hotel to get to bed early for our 4AM wakeup.
The New Orleans airport was a zoo this morning when we arrived at 4:30AM. Apparently there were a lot of flight cancellations yesterday. It was handy that I have A-List on Southwest because we’d probably still be waiting in line to check our bags. We managed to be in our car heading home from the Austin airport by 8AM, which was handy because I had a 9AM Dr. appt for my annual physical.
I’ve had borderline high cholesterol for a couple of years. Not high enough for the doctor to put me on statins, but high enough for him to tell me I need to make some lifestyle changes. My doctor was excited that my labs from last week show that my cholesterol is now on the low end of the range. He asked me what I’ve been doing differently and I got a kick out of saying “Living in Costa Rica” 🙂
Jill and I are both a little wiped out from New Orleans and it seems weird to be getting on a plane again tomorrow. Jill has got us all organized for tomorrow’s return flight to Costa Rica. Jill’s sister Stephanie will meet us in Houston and fly with us to Costa Rica for a week of fun!
Adventure is out there!
PS. We are both a little nervous that we haven’t been practicing Spanish enough since we left Costa Rica.
Jill and Todd in Costa Rica 