Last week, Avital and I had a short vacation in New Orleans and it was great! It was my first time there, but she’d been there a couple times.

We stayed at an AirBnB in the Marigny. It was a block from Frenchmen Street, which is lined with excellent music venues and is much more popular with the locals than touristy Bourbon Street. When we went out to Frenchmen at night, there was live jazz pouring from every bar and restaurant and there were more bands along the streets. At one point, a brass band showed up on a street corner and a dancing crowd spilled into the intersection, cutting off traffic.


The food was also delicious and we ate incredibly well the entire trip. Some of the stand-out dishes were:

The Trio (shrimp and grits, red beans and rice, and crawfish poutine) from Fete au Fete in St. Roch Market



Willa Jean’s Cornbread with cane syrup


And the entire menu from Shaya, an Israeli restaurant named America’s best new restaurant in 2016 – sorry for no pictures.

Beyond the food and the music we spend a bunch of time just walking around and taking in the city. There was lots of great architecture ranging from historic French- and Spanish-style buildings to cute, little houses.

It was an excellent trip – fun and relaxing – and I could definitely see us returning at some point.