Leopards do the Big Easy

Yes, I'm still alive. I know most of you are probably like what the heck happened to the Speed Leopard after her rainy, snowy Seattle 1/2 Marathon :)

I've literally hit the road....

3 trips to Louisiana in the last 4 weeks have left me little time for blogging but I have been enjoying the wild ride and I did manage to spend 5 days in New Orleans with my husband over New Year's which was AWESOME!

I can't say enough about our experience in this beautiful city but we can't wait to return. Check out the view from our hotel.

I had a business trip scheduled in Baton Rouge on January 2 so we decided since we'd never been to New Orleans pre-hurricane and we knew that they really needed tourists to return to the city and we were able to score tickets to see the Saints play in the Superdome it just seemed to good to pass up.

So we headed down to the Big Easy on a Wednesday and immediately started enjoying the place. Bourbon Street was crazy, fun and totally not what I expected but I did manage to pick up a lot of beads ;)

We went deep into the Bayou one day with a Cajun named Tom and we saw everything from nutria, racoons, alligator, herons to the catfish he hauled from one of his traps. I even got to hold one which was totally cool.


We got HOOKED on Beignets from Cafe du Monde (think globs of pastry deep fried and covered with mounds of powdered sugar) and ended up enjoying some every day. We tried Mufflettas, catfish, crawfish, soft shelled crabs and each place we went the food seemed to get better and better.

We didn't really see the parts of the city that were still destroyed post-Katrina but the effects of the hurricane still being felt across the region. The people were amazing and so welcoming.

On New Year's Eve we watched the Saints play the Carolina Panthers in the Superdome which yielded one of the most memorable moments of the trip for me. Jazz musician Kermit Ruffins was playing the national anthem on his trumpet and the people in the dome started singing along. It was extremely moving to think about all those Orleanians who'd just months earlier been abandoned in that same place singing about the greatness of our nation.

Even though the Saints lost, the star players ran the perimeter after the game and Preston got to high-five Reggie Bush which was pretty cool.

We jostled through the throngs of party goers on Bourbon Street which was a harrowing experience as beads came flying from all different directions and finally made it to the Mississippi River to watch the most amazing fireworks display.

It was a fantastic ending to a great vacation and we can't wait to return to this city which I've dubbed Disneyland for Adults :)