Part 3 of 4
Our little getaway to New Orleans was to celebrate my birthday, and besides enjoying the getaway together, we had 4 priorities:
- Eat good food
- Van Gogh Immersive Experience
- The National WWII Museum
- Hear live jazz music
As I’ve already covered the food in a previous post, I’ll address the other 3 here. As it’s a limited engagement, the VanGogh Immersive Experience was the activity that drew my attention to New Orleans at this particular time. I have heard so many wonderful reviews of the experience I wanted to see it for myself. I especially liked learning about VanGogh’s life. I had not realized the extent of the darkness in his life, or the vast amount of art he produced in such a short period of time. The displays were set up very nicely, and other than the awful crayons they supplied, I had fun creating my own VanGogh masterpiece and displaying it on the wall at the end of the tour. The Immersive experience was fun, albeit a little too long. I was ready to get up and leave several minutes before it finished its loop. (Although I did stay until it was finished.) We did not pay the additional fee for the Virtual Reality portion. I am now curious to visit the Immersive Experiences of other artists.
Van Gogh Experience
Van Gogh Experience
Van Gogh Experience
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As a retired Air Force family, military history museums are especially attractive to us. Because we have lived in Europe and visited Normandy a couple times, we erroneously had thought The National WWII Museum would not be as interesting to us. However, after reviewing the website and realizing how much of the Pacific Theater was also there, we decided it was well worth a visit. We were not disappointed! The museum is set up very well with many displays and man videos (more about that in a bit) that really kept our attention. We began in a “train car” where we were given dog tags which we took through the museum to insert into different stations so that we could follow the life of someone throughout the war. I had a journalist. This part was a little confusing as there were supposed to be 6 stations and I only found 3, but it did add an extra appeal to the visit. I especially liked the Home Front exhibit and walking through a house as it would have been during that period. We were there for 4 hours and will need to return to see it all.
Frenchman Street is known for its restaurants and live jazz music. Walking down the street listening to the music emanating from all the restaurants made it festive stroll. Dare I admit this out loud, and still hope to return to New Orleans without being tarred and feathered? We do not care for creole food which is why we chose The Three Muses I wrote about in my earlier post. The restaurant provided us with non- traditional foods from which to choose and excellent music. Nick Solnick was the local musician headlined that evening. He had 2 additional musicians with him but unfortunately I do not have their names. They were really good. We stayed well beyond the completion of our meal to listen.
Jazz Musicians
As I shared in my first post regarding this visit, the typical attractions that come to mind when one thinks of New Orleans ( Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street, the French Quarter and beignets) were not particularly enticing to us and we did not plan to visit. However, we are happy to have been proven wrong: New Orleans really does have something for everyone – even us. In fact, Andy asked me just a few days ago, “when do you think we’ll go back?”