Tourist In Your Own Town - 2007

Carlos and I have been planning a small vacation for us. We finally went on it this past weekend.

We had decided to be Tourists In Our Own Town. The deal was that he would take care of the hotel reservations and I would take care of planning everything else.

Friday, we headed downtown to the Hilton Hotel, right outside of the French Quarter. The normal check in time is 3 pm, but Carlos called ahead and found out that we could check into our room at noon. We did.

I built our weekend around food so our first scheduled stop was to be Acme Oyster House. We were hungry, but wanted to wait for the lunch rush to be over so we decided to stop at the Riverwalk Shopping Center for a quick bite to eat. Carlos and I both had taco salads at Margarita Del Rio.

Good thing the salads were filling. There was a really long line once we arrived at Acme. We decided to move on to our next destination – The Hermann-Grima House. Picture of the home's dining room attached.

He and I both love museums and home tours, though I like to read the plaques more than he does.

After the tour, we meandered through the Quarter, down to the Satchmo Summer Fest which we found out didn’t open until Saturday.

Being the flexible guys we are (Carlos actually commended me on my flexibility!), we went to The Presbytere instead. We had gone to The Cabildo, the museum on the other side of St. Louis Cathedral about six months ago.

For dinner, we were going to return to Acme Oyster House, but the line was still too long. I asked a “local” where the best oysters besides Acme were. He told us Drago’s was the place to go. We started with a dozen charbroiled oysters. For entrees, Carlos had the Catch of the Day (trout). I had the duck. Both were terrific. We couldn’t eat there every night – or every month. The meal came to a bit over $80.

Here’s a pre-Katrina review of Drago's Metairie location. I didn’t see anything about their new (downtown) location.

We were heading off to sleep when Michael called. He and Spaces were catching a movie at 9:55 pm. I was so tired that I slept through most of it. Carlos hated the ending. It was nice to see Spaces and Michael though.

End of Day One.

Once Carlos posts his version of our weekend, I’ll have a link here.