Mother's Day

Sunday, May 10, 2015 – Mother’s Day!

I have set my alarm to six o’clock so that I have plenty of time to stretch and enjoy the glorious shower and work a bit on the blog.  I don’t have the wifi password, so I can’t post, but that’s fine.  I’m not really ready anyway!

I also take a little time to document my stupendous room and a bit more of the hotel!

 I’m downstairs promptly at eight o’clock.  By about 8:15 we are all assembled and so begins the adventure of packing everyone in the van and finding our way to the Live Oak.  There is a ton of construction in New Orleans right now and we finally call Clare to ask for advice!

There is it!  Right on the corner!  What a beautiful space this has become.  It’s amazing when you look as the “before” pictures!  The colors are bright and fresh and the room is light and inviting.  The menu is varied and even includes Ma Leavy’s pancakes!  It’s really hard to choose and just when I think I’ve decided Bill orders the Mother and Child Omelet which is on the Specials page.  I hadn’t even see the Specials page but now that’s what I want!

 We were the first ones in the door and the place a completely filled up within fifteen minutes or less!

There’s a never-ending coffee pot with a delicious local brew and it’s just the beginning of a taste treat!  When the dishes start arriving there is a lot of oohing and ahhhing  and silence falls as everyone is enjoying their breakfasts too much to be distracted by chatting!  My omelet has chicken and onions and spinach and tomatoes and some sort of delectable sauce, and it comes with the best potatoes ever! Nearly everyone has something different and everyone is convinced that theirs is the best!  (In the middle of my breakfast I receive a Happy Mother's Day text from my kiddo as well as two dear friends!  Lovely!)

The Café also sells cards and magnets and tee-shirts and we all have to check those out, too, and one of the bathrooms has pictures of people we know!!

The musicians have arrived!  There’s live music seven days a week during both breakfast and lunch!  The duo is really good! 

We finally decide to leave, with a promise to catch up with Clare later in the evening when she had closed up the café and cleaned everything in preparation for tomorrow.  We check out the neighborhood around the café, being entranced by all the architectural wonders from days past, then pack back into the van and take a driving tour of the city.

We see Audubon Park, adjacent to the Audubon Zoo and the drive-through daiquiri place, and swing through the Garden District with it’s amazing mansions before parking and wandering through Lafayette Cemetery Number 1.  The tombs are all above ground, of course, since we are below sea level here.  Hence the levees.

It’s now officially hot and we find a little café adjacent to the Garden District Bookstore that sells refreshing frozen lemonade and we cool off and discuss our next adventure.  Turns out several of us would like to walk a bit in the Garden District and see Anne Rice’s old house (both aged and previous!).  There are so many beautiful homes here!

The next stop if the New Orleans Jazz National Park, also know as Louis Armstrong Park, complete with fountains, statues and the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts.

 Across the street is the Voodoo Lounge, aka Club Allegro, and it’s now late enough in the day for a refreshing adult beverage!  The bartender is from New Zealand and has a book for sale on Amazon entitled We Have You Where You Want Us!  His name is Caprichio de Vellas.

You might not be surprised to find that many of us know consider this to be nap time!  We head back to the Olivier House and disperse to our bed chambers.  We’ll reconvene in a couple of hours when Jackie and Clare have figured out our dinner plans!  What a wonderful whirlwind of fun and festivities!!