Mom Camp Hits NOLA: Day 6

I am not sure who was more effected by the trip to New Orleans: the kids or the city.

To get ready for the trip, the kids read A Good Night for Ghosts by Mary Pope Osborne.  It is from the Magic Tree House series, a great early chapter book.  Although Cinco finds the reading rather easy, I like having them read the book together.  The take turns each reading a chapter. Best of all, the Magic Tree House webite offer lesson plans that support each book.  We did the one for A Good Night for Ghosts.  The kids learned about the city, jazz and Louis Armstrong.  We also listened to a few of recordings before arriving in NOLA.

Things started out well enough.  Good Food for starters.  We had to introduce Cinco and The Princess to the world famous Bienets at Cafe Du Mond. Yum…

We did the traditional walk through Jackson Square and hid under a tree during a summer thunderstorm.
We headed off for a riverboat cruise on the Natchez.  It is one of the last actual steamboats operating in the US.  Other boats look like a steamboat, but they are electrical like the Creole Queen.

The Creole Queen

In preparation for a ride on a riverboat, we put together our own paper model of the Mississippi Queen. Check out papertoys.com if you want make your own.

The river cruise included and old time jazz band and great narration of the river sites.  They included:

Civil War Barricks

For kids and adults with a sweet tooth, this is the 2nd largest sugar factory in the Western Hemisphere.  The largest is in Brazil.

The Domino Sugar Factory  

After dinner at Pat O’Brien’s, we took the children to hear a little jazz preformed by the Preservation Hall Jazz band.  The set only lasts 45 minutes but it’s worth every second.  We reserved advance tickets in the 2nd row.

The night ended with a stroll down Burbon Street.  It’s hard to shock kids from Las Vegas, but New Orleans might have have done it. It wasn’t the drinking or the nude bars, rather it was the band waking down the street escorted by the police and trailing a parade of walking revelers.