Western Caribbean 2019:
Day 3 - New Orleans Sailout

Bundlings.com: [Main] [Contact Us] [Events] [Family] [Fun] [Garden] [Misc.] [Photos] [Search] [Site Index] [Travel]

Western Caribbean 2019: [Day 1 - Great River Road] [Day 2 - New Orleans] [Day 3 - New Orleans Sailout] [Day 4 - At Sea] [Day 5 - Chichén Itzá, Mexico] [Day 6 - Roatán, Honduras] [Day 7 - Harvest Caye, Belize] [Day 8 - Costa Maya, Mexico] [Day 9 - At Sea] [Day 10 - Drive Home]

	Sunday, November 17, 2019: We awoke before 7:00 AM to a beautiful day in New Orleans. Our view was slightly different than the one from Debbie's room when she stayed here in 2004.
	In the light of day, we were able to see that we had bought the wrong pralines. It's an easy mistake to make, since the word "CLASSIC" is in all uppercase in a large font, but the word "Creamy" is in a smaller font hidden above the logo. The correct ones have "Original" in place of "Creamy." Lesson learned. However, even a subpar praline is better than no pralines at all.
	Tom went out to Cafe Beignet on Royal Street to fetch us some breakfast. Debbie may have been a little overserved the night before, so this was a very welcome treat.
	We checked out of the hotel at 10:30 AM and were happy to be reunited with our van once again.
	We headed out to try again to find parking.
	Lo and behold, there was the parking! Yesterday, nothing, but today, there were signs leading us right to the entrance, ...
	... with the promise of $20/day parking, as opposed to the $40 or $50/day rates that the lot offers normally. Not a single thing online notes that this magical rate must be paid as a flat fee or that this is only available on embarkation day of your cruise.
	We parked, dropped off our cruise luggage with the porters, ...
	... and headed to the Riverwalk Shopping Mall to kill some time.
	It took some time, but eventually we made it through the entire mall to one of the back doors, where we were rewarded with a view of the river ...
	... and of our cruise ship, the Norwegian Getaway.
	We had an hour to kill before our scheduled embarkation time so we walked around the waterfront a bit, ...
	... enjoyed the local wildlife, ...
	... then headed to another Cafe Du Monde location to try in vain to get burned out on beignets.
	While we stood in line, we watched the bakers making and cutting the beignet dough.
	We opted for milk and cold water with our beignets. Tasty!
	Embarkation took about 45 unphotographed minutes. Even when we were this close to the ship, it was still another five minutes before ...
	... we actually set foot on deck, ...
	... and another five before we were inside.
	We hiked up to the 14th floor but the cabins weren't ready yet, so we hiked up one more to an outdoor deck. Behold New Orleans!
	Our ship had its own water park and ...
	... its own ropes course. More on those later in the cruise.
	There's the mighty Mississippi, and that's the view looking downriver even though it goes north briefly before heading to the east and then south.
	We wondered if we'd be going under any bridges, so we used the trusty 40x zoom on our camera to get pictures of every one we could see in the distance. Here's one, ...
	... and another. We took four photos in all but we ended up not going under a single bridge.
	We headed to the buffet restaurant and loaded up our plates. It was great to be back in the land of cruise ship food after a 2 1/2 year break.
	We were able to access our room by 2:00.PM. Ours is the one on the left. Since it was the last one on the ship to jut out, it was easy to spot from shore.
	Let's go in, shall we?
	Here's our room, Norwegian Getaway's cabin 14860.
	Here's the bathroom with plenty of shelf space.
	We ventured out to get our first ice cream cones of the trip. The chocolate soft serve wasn't working so we opted for scooped ice cream. After this, we made it a daily habit to get soft serve cones.
	With an hour to go before scheduled departure, we soaked up the last bit of free internet.
	The ship cam showed us that the Carnival Glory was in the berth ahead of us.
	We headed out to the explore the ship. Deck Eight contained many restaurants, with outdoor bars adjacent to them.
	On the other side of Deck Eight were a pair of glass windows in the floor.
	It was 4:00 with no sign of leaving, so we amused ourselves by watching the activity on the river. Check out that huge gun on the Coast Guard boat.
	The Natchez riverboat was heading into shore as the Creole Queen was heading out again.
	We decided to get a drink for sailout even if sailout wasn't going to happen. This fine bartender poured Debbie a plastic cup topped with an inch of foam then tossed out the bottle with 1/4 beer still in it. Not cool, dude.
	From one of the high points of Deck 15, the riffraff can look over into the private deck area for the rich folks. It either wasn't open or wasn't being used because we didn't see a soul there.
	Over an hour after the scheduled departure time, activity on the dock below was nearly non-existent but there was still no sign of leaving.
	So we watched the sunset, ...
	... then watched the city lights come up.
	At 5:45 PM, we had given up on waiting and bolted to the buffet for a quick dinner. This, of course, is when the ship started to move.
	We got up on deck in time to see Jackson Square with St. Louis Cathedral lit up behind it.
	Buh-bye, New Orleans!
	Tom noticed that every time we passed a barge, a Coast Guard ship would cruise between us and the barge. What do you suppose they were protecting us from?
	We were very disappointed that it was dark for the entire sail out, since one of the draws of this cruise was sailing down the Mississippi. But it was a clear night and it was interesting in the dark anyway.
	The refineries on the river's edge were especially fascinating.
	After awhile, we went in to see if our luggage had arrived. Our first piece arrived around 7:00 PM. By 8:00 PM, the other piece hadn't arrived, so we called to enquire about it and were told to come to Deck 6 to pick it up.
	It had been impounded because it had an extension cord in it, which is forbidden on a cruise ship. They confiscated the extension cord for the duration of the cruise.
	Finally, at 8:15 PM, Tom was officially on vacation and we were able to relax and enjoy the scenery.
	At 11:00 PM, we were still passing bright lights on shore, ...
	... and by 1:00 AM, those lights were appearing with less and less frequency. We didn't stay awake long enough to see when we reached the Gulf of Mexico, so we had to wait a week to enjoy it on the way back. Day 4 >