We divided our New Orleans Recap into two posts. Click here to read Part 1 and continue reading to learn about the rest of our adventure!

Saturday

We woke up and grabbed a quick espresso at Merchant and then went on a very calm BlueBike ride through the western edge of the French Quarter and the Marigny to St. Roch Market, in the St. Roch neighborhood. St Roch (pronounced “Rock”) Market is amazing! It’s like a more relaxed (and slightly smaller) version of Union Market in DC. It has so many diverse food stalls, from local seafood to coffee to Vietnamese to Haitian.

I got a Roch Fizz from Coast Roast, which was espresso, vanilla syrup and soda water. It tasted like a root beer float without the ice cream! Marnay got a cold brew, great on this warm day. Both of us got our breakfast from the Daily Beet, a juice and breakfast food stand. We kept it light with avocado toast and an egg plate, since we still had a lot of eating to do.

After eating, we walked through the neighborhood towards the banks of the mighty Mississippi. Finally! Somehow we had not seen the river since we arrived. We stumbled upon a food festival in a HUGE industrial building along the Mississippi that had a roof but no walls. The most welcome sight was a huge pot of crawfish being boiled (it was crawfish season), but we unfortunately were full and still had a lot of eating left to do.

We hit up the French Quarter, which was mobbed with tourists, as expected. We did get to watch the March for Our Lives protestors head down Decatur Street. Even though we were far from DC, it was nice to feel like we were participating.

We grabbed BlueBikes by our Airbnb and biked through downtown and Treme and then finally, the Lafitte Greenway. Our destination was Parkway Bakery & Tavern, one of New Orleans’ most famous po’ boy joints. Our best bite: the crispy shrimp po’ boy, so fresh and covered in Cajun spices. Mmm! Afterwards, we sat on the banks of Bayou St. John, which we had biked along the day before. The weather was beautiful the whole time we were in New Orleans, and it was nice to see people having picnics along the water.

Dinner that night was at La Petite Grocery, the 2016 James Beard Foundation Award-winner for Best Chef South. We started the night with cocktails and blue crab beignets. Cleverly, the kitchen sprinkled the beignets with flaky sea salt in place of powdered sugar. For our entrees, we kept up with our theme of eating local ingredients and shared Gulf cobia with crispy skin and paneed rabbit, which tasted like rabbit schnitzel. We even got crème brulee with Louisiana sugar!

Our dinner was earlier than the night before, so we had time to do something else. The only question was: What to do? I had my mind set on going to a dive bar, so after a little online search we took a Lyft to Saturn Bar, in the Bywater neighborhood. Saturn Bar was ridiculously divey, but fun! It was full of mostly hipster-types but also a few crusty old men. Marnay and I both had a beer and shot and then called it a night.

Sunday

Sunday was unfortunately our last day in New Orleans, and our flight home was at 3:30 that afternoon. We woke up early so that we could make the most out of the morning and early afternoon. Since we liked it so much, we did a repeat of Saturday morning: Espresso at Merchant and a BlueBike Ride to St Roch Market. Marnay had an egg and biscuit platter from Fete Au Fete and I had an incredible Louisiana Crab Cake with Corn-Charred Cream from Elysian Seafood – so good!

We took advantage of another beautiful day by walking around and then biked back to the Airbnb so we could pack and head to the airport. New Orleans is an incredible place to visit. I do not think we will ever forget our trip. I can’t believe it has taken us this long to get there!

Favorite Place We Went
Paul: Lafitte Greenway
Marnay: St Roch Market

Favorite Bite
Paul: Louisiana white shrimp and tasso ham henican – Commander’s Palace
Marnay: Crème brulee with Louisiana sugar – La Petite Grocery

Favorite Drink
Paul: Bonded Sazerac – Cure
Marnay: Bandol Rose – Bacchanal

Insider Tip
Paul: RTA three-day unlimited pass
Marnay: You can experience the food and culture of New Orleans without needing to spend much time in the touristy areas.