The flight from San Jose was at 6.24am, so we had to leave by 4.45am. My cuz came to drop us off at the airport, which is only 7 minutes from home.

Because it was the Saturday of the Labor Day weekend, there was not much crowd at the airport, and we were through security by 5.25am! So now we had 1 hour to kill, and not a single store was open, so that I could pick up the Sports Illustrated with the NFL scouting reports.

Killed some time trying to watch other people walking by, and in the end, at about 6am, the store opened. I went to the store to pick up some snacky stuff and also the magazine. They did not have the latest issue of SI, so I picked up ESPN The Magazine, which had a similar story on NFL. Boarded the plane and went off to sleep. It was after all, a Saturday morning :-)

Landed in Dallas on time, and we did not have too much time, so just went to Pizza Hut and had some pizza and bread sticks for lunch. Landed in New Orleans slightly early, at about 2pm.

We took a cab to the hotel because it was the most optimum transportation from the airport to downtown, where the hotel was located. Picked up some flyers about things to do in New Orleans, from the airport information desk. It was HOT in New Orleans. But since it was cloudy, it was not as bad as Miami when we were there for the 4th of July weekend. Here, there was a slight breeze too, so even though it was warm and humid, it was bearable.

We rested for a bit, and started going through some of the flyers. The hotel front desk gave us some names of tour operators for the swamp tours and alligator watching tours that they knew of and had partnered with. The one big advantage that they had was those tour operators would pick us up from the hotel and drop us back off. We looked at what’s available and what’s do-able and decided to do a plantation/swamp tour combo in the day time the next day.

After deciding that, we set off to go to the French Quarter. As we were walking down we decided to actually take the day pass on the street car and take the entire trip of the St Charles Street trolley. That way, we could see the entire city, or at least the main portions of it, in a quick manner.

So we went to the trolley stop and waited. As soon as we reached, we saw the trolley on the other side pass by, and we were tempted to cross the tracks and get into that one. But for some reason we did not. That direction was actually the correct one. Where we were standing was going to take us to the French Quarter, rather than the city. But the entire thing is a loop, so we decided to go to French Quarter, but not get off at the last stop, but take the entire loop and then come back to the French Quarter.

It was a nice ride. It rained for about 10 minutes, but we got to sit for 95% of the entire loop, so we had a good time seeing the sights. New Orleans is quite a run down place, or so it seems because it is ‘historical’ or whatever. One way or the other, the place looked quite old. The houses were nice - huge, as well as well done in terms of yards, lawns, etc. Took some pictures of the houses on the street. Passed by Loyola College and Tulane University. I guess school’s just starting, so it was not that crowded there.

By the time we reached the French Quarter it was almost sun down. So we walked through the main streets (Canal street was where we got off the trolley), and went straight to the Hard Rock Cafe. I had to collect my pin from there to add to the collection ;-). We thought we’d eat at some local place, but since we were hungry, and I did not want to experiment, we settled for Hard Rock dinner.

Walked back to the station and came back home. Watched some TV and went to sleep. Had a relatively early day next day. Phew, this was a long day, but a lot of fun already! :-)