Day 1: New Orleans

We had such a fun day! Yesterday we flew all day, ate dinner at the mall food court and went to bed at like 8pm (CST). We were tired! Today we started out by eating breakfast at the hotel and headed to Touro synagogue for services. It was a very typical reform saturday morning service. Talyah and I played in the children's play area pretty much the whole time. This synagogue however doesn't look like a typical reform synagogue. It is huge, old and gorgeous. We had a nice time looking at all the stained glass windows. After services we headed over Magazine Street where we walked for awhile and found a cute little cafe and had panini's and Talyah had a peanut butter sandwhich. We walked over to whole foods from there and bought sunblock (which I had left at the hotel) and grapes to munch on. We then headed up to Audobon Park to walk around and landed ourselves at Soul Fest at the zoo. It was very crowded but it was a great zoo day and the music and southern fare food was great. It was sunny and in the upper 60's so perfect zoo weather. It was a great afternoon. Talyah was well beyond the need for a nap so we got back in the car and drove around for awhile. We looked at all the beautiful houses in Uptown, Fraternity row at Tulane and then headed towards the lower ninth ward. That was quite the experience. It is amazing how 4.5 years have passed since Katrina and it is still in shambles. We drove around and saw lots of abandonded houses still with the spray paint on them from when the rescue groups were marking houses with the date, and if they found people or animals. We saw things like one dog saved and other ones that said RIP so and so. What is amazing is that many of the neighborhoods have 1 or 2 new houses among all the empty and destroyed houses. What would it be like to be the only person living a street that used to have 25 households on it? How do you just leave your house? It was quite an experience to see. When the sun started to dip in the sky we headed back towards the French Quarter. Even at 5:30 pm it was packed with people and cars so we decided to skip it for the evening. We were tired and Talyah was not in a great mood. We headed back to our hotel and went to IHOP for dinner. Now we are relaxing in our hotel room trying to talk Talyah into going "night night". Tomorrow we will head to the French Quarter and our other hotel.

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