NOLA 2011 - A French Quarter Saturday and Sunday in the Garden District

After a long break, I'm back with the rest of New Orleans recap. (Update: I actually wrote this some time ago but am just now getting around to uploading pics due to a bad/slow/unreliable internet connection at home.)

We started Saturday with brunch at The Red Slipper, a cute little cafe just around the corner from our hotel. I love having the Yelp ap on our phones because it's so easy to locate something nearby with good reviews! And this place had a free mimosa if you checked in on Yelp! Score! After breakfast, we spent the rest of the day exploring the French Quarter. We walked through Cafe du Monde but decided against a beignet. I've tried one before, and Luke wasn't interested enough to stand in line/wait for a table. We explored Jackson Square, checked out the Louis Armstrong Jazz Festival ("Satchmo Summer Fest"), and stopped for an afternoon snack of super tasty boiled shrimp. All during our trip, we had our eye out for a ring that we might buy to replace my engagement rings. I bought Luke's ring in New Orleans when I was there on my bachelorette party trip, so we thought it'd be so cool if we could find a little something for me there. Unfortunately, the place had closed down! :( We found a couple of other beautiful sapphire, diamond rings. I've always loved sapphires because it's my birthstone, and the rings are very Princess Diana/Kate Middleton-esque. But we could never pull the trigger. Although they were gorgeous rings, we weren't sure how trust worthy some of the stores were, and because the rings were still quite expensive, we decided not to buy something if we weren't 100 percent sure that's what we wanted. So, I'm still rocking a $25 cz from Target. (Update: This past weekend my Nana loaned me her engagement ring that my Granddad gave to her 60 years ago, so I'm now wearing that ring with pride.)









Saturday night we went to dinner at Broussard's in the French Quarter. We started with the baked Oysters, and they were fabulous. Unfortunately, the rest of the meal wasn't quite as tasty. Nothing was bad, but the appetizer definitely stole the show. After dinner, we went to Frenchmen Street to listen to a little live music, but I got tired pretty quickly (like couldn't hold my eyes open tired), and we left before too long.






Sunday we rented bikes and set off to explore the Garden District. We just rode around most of the day, checking out the cool, old houses and stopping here and there for a drink or snack. Around mid-day, it started pouring down rain while we were on our bikes. I'm not talking a light sprinkle; it was a torrential down pour. When huge, loud, scary, straight to the ground lightning started, we decided to pull over at the next place we saw and take cover. I was a little embarrassed to go in somewhere because I was soaking wet, but the patrons and bartender at the little place we stopped coaxed me in after Luke went in to check it out. We froze our buns off in this little place since they had the AC going while we were soaking wet, but it was a nice place to sit with a drink and let the rain pass. The rainy day bike ride was our favorite part of the trip! At first, I was thinking I don't want to get all wet, but once it happened and I just went with it, it was really fun to ride through the rain. Not to mention we were coming from 40+ days of 100+ heat and extreme drought in Texas, so the rain was quite refreshing. After the storm passed, we got back on our bikes, stopped for a suppertime muffaletta and then called it a pretty early night. The next morning, we were up bright and early for our morning flight back to DFW. All in all, we had an awesome time celebrating our 2 years of marriage! New Orleans is such a cool city with so much to explore, and it's such a quick flight from DFW. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a long weekend getaway!

NOLA 2011 - Friday Night on Bourbon Street

This past weekend, Luke and I visited New Orleans to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary. Luke was in Seattle at the end of last week, so we met up at DFW. He didn't even leave the airport! He landed and made his way from terminal D to terminal A! We only had about 50 minutes between his first landing and our departure to NOLA. Luckily, though, everything worked out just as planned, and he even made it in time for a pre-boarding cerveza at TGI Fridays. The flight there was great. We were at the back of the plane, which I usually don't like, but this time it was kind of nice. It wasn't crowded at all so we could talk and be silly without feeling like you were bothering people around you. The flight attendants also gave us a complimentary glass of wine, beer and cheese/cracker/nut plate. Thanks, AA!

Once we landed, we checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Sheraton on Canal Street. It was really nice and within walking distance to everything we wanted to do. And when we checked in, there was an awesome cheese plate waiting for us. There was a card on it for Ms. Jennifer Sarah Gonzalez, but we just ignored that and dug in. After a little snack, we headed to Bourbon. The rest of the night involved several drinks, an awesome Jazz band, a mechanical bull and late night hummus. Basically, it was perfect! Here are a few pics:













There's a funny (at least to us) story to go along with the smallish, nothing special about them drinks in the last picture. While we were hanging out listening to a really cool jazz band, I went to the bar to get us two drinks. I ordered a whiskey coke and a vodka water with a splash of grapefruit. When the bartender asked me what type of liquors I wanted, instead of saying "house" or "well" or whatever you say, I said the first thing that came to my mind. Makers Mark and Grey Goose. (I guess I had alliteration on the brain.) Keeping with the alliteration theme, those two drinks cost us a pretty penny. (Just so you know, Luke and I aren't big liquor drinkers. We typically play it safe with beer and wine, so we definitely didn't have a preference on the liquor. I'm just a goof.) Oh well! What a fun night and awesome start to our trip!

Jealous

I'm just a tad bit jealous of my husband who flew off on a jet plane to Seattle, trading the 107+ heat for a high of 77 degrees. But I'm glad one of us got to escape the heat, and I guess he's more deserving since he's been driving around in this hot as Hades Texas summer without A/C. (I'm not sure how he does it, and with temps as high as they've been this week, I've honestly been a bit worried about him in that hot car and am glad he got a break from driving for at least part of this week.) And I can't wait to meet up with him this weekend for a 2nd anniversary rendezvous in New Orleans!

We're going to dine. We're going to drink fine wine (but probably not really that fine). We're going to ride bikes. But mostly we're going to celebrate our sweet marriage that has now been alive and well, thriving even, for two full years. Now that's nothing in the whole scheme of things, but every year holds memories to be recounted and milestones to be celebrated, and I can't wait to do just that all weekend long. No dishes to do. No groceries to buy. No workouts to dread. Just the two of us with a change of scenery. Happy (almost) anniversary to us!

PS: New Orleans recount to come next week. Hopefully, we'll remember to use the camera so that I can include some fun pics! That always makes my writing a bit better. :)

Preparing for Madrid Monday

We've done a few small things to begin preparing for our move to Madrid, like cleaning out junk filled closets and gathering all the information we need to obtain Visas, but this weekend we did the first big, big thing. We put our house up for lease, and now the move feels really real and really soon.

We met with a realtor on Saturday morning, signed all the paperwork and put the sign in our yard. After she left, Luke and I created a Craig's List ad for it just to get the word out a little more. On Sunday morning, we got an email from our Craig's List ad, and then a call that someone wanted to look at it. So we quickly made sure everything was picked up and left for a little while. We heard from the agent that showed it that they liked it and were going to call our listing agent. Hopefully, they were being honest and follow through. What a blessing and relief it would be if the house would go that quickly! Until then, my fingers (and toes) are crossed!

Mexicali

Since I crazily, maybe even stupidly, named our blog "Matthews, Table for Two" I figure I might as well talk about a restaurant every now and then. That brings us to Mexicali, a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant on Northwest Highway just a couple of miles from our house. Luke had just seen it in the Advocate, a local neighborhood magazine, so when we needed a place to eat on Tuesday evening (because I was exhausted and starving and not willing to wait for food to cook in my kitchen), it was the perfect choice.

The place looks like a dump from the outside. And to be honest, it also looks like a dump from the inside. All of the booths were cracking, and there was (literally) a huge hole in the wall next to our table. Appearance aside, though, we liked it, and I'm sure we'll go back soon. The food was pretty good. We split fajitas for one, and there was more than enough for both of us to fill up and take some home (which Luke ate about 2 hours later and the next day for lunch). The chicken was better than the beef, but it was all a bit salty, which makes sense because the waiter told us they use soy sauce in the preparation. We had a bit of a miscommunication with the waiter (or more like he just thought we were dumb). I begged Luke to ask them to not put butter on the fajitas, and for some reason it turned about to be a little bit complicated and the term "non-sizzling" was used a time or two. But I think it turned out the way I wanted because the peppers and onions were most definitely not cooked in butter. (Thanks, Lukas, for always doing the talking for me.)

On to the good stuff. They have all day happy hour on Monday and Tuesday, which meant $1.50 margaritas and draft beer. Luke went for the margarita. I stuck with Bud Light. And the best part. Our entire bill was $21. Pretty super cheap for fajitas and a couple of drinks each. I plan to stock up on Tex Mex in the next few months because it's going to be pretty hard to come by on the other side of the pond. :)

Weekends Galore

Well, apparently I only blog on Fridays. I guess it's better than nothing for the time being. I seriously cannot believe that it's (nearly) August. The summer has flown by, and our time left in the US is dwindling down. When we first found out we were moving to Spain, October 1 seemed so far away. Now, we've only got about 8 (give or take a couple) weekends left before we'll be boarding the plane with a one way ticket to Madrid. (I wonder if we'll be red flagged due to our one way tickets???) Our weekends left, especially in August, are quickly filling up.

Next weekend, we're heading to New Orleans to celebrate our 2nd anniversary! We had been planning to just stay in Dallas and go to a nice dinner or something, but yesterday I discovered that we had enough AA miles to get us to NOLA for free. I told Luke about it, and we decided to do a price line bid for a hotel. If our bid was accepted, we'd go. Well, we're going! At first I had a little regret thinking that we might want a quiet weekend at home blah-blah-blah, but I've gotten over that. (Side note: I'm not sure I've ever made a decision without at least a tiny bit of regret.) We like to go places, and if we're able to right now before we have a family, we might as well go when and where we please. (Hopefully, that theory won't send us straight to the poor house.) So I'm super excited and have spent the whole morning researching restaurants and things to do! There's a huge, free Jazz festival while we're there, and a bunch of the restaurants are participating in Coolinary, which is basically NOLA's version of Restaurant week, so we shouldn't have a problem keeping ourselves entertained or nourished. (Not that I was ever really worried about that. :))

The following weekend we're headed to Norman to hang out with Luke's family and hometown friends. This most likely we'll be our last chance to see everybody before we ship out. The last 2 weekends in August are currently free, but I'm hoping we'll be packing and moving out of our house. We're meeting with our realtor tomorrow and officially putting our house up for lease. I'm crossing my fingers that it goes sooner rather than later. Number 1: I don't want to have to worry about whether or not it will lease before we move and Number 2: I want a good excuse to move home with my padres for our last month in Texas. That way, we'll all be good and sick of each other and won't even be sad when we move 5,000 miles away. :)

That brings us to Labor Day weekend, and we'll be going to Chicago with Adam, where he will meet up with his homegirl. The next weekend falls right before my birthday. We've tossed around the idea of going to Little Rock for a Razorback game, but no for sure plans have been made yet. The rest of September, I'm sure we'll be packing, finalizing details for the move, and soaking up all the time with family that we can get.

This weekend, we're meeting with the realtor, finishing the final touches on our new fence that our family so graciously helped us with last week and enjoying date night on Saturday to use up a groupon before it expires next week. Happy weekend!

Work Out Wrap-Up #2

This week I wanted to focus on getting back in the habit of morning work-outs. While Luke was working late during busy season, I started excercising in the evenings since I wasn't in such a rush to get home to an empty house. Now that it's so hot and we have more going on in the evenings, I really want to amp up the AM workouts. I did good in the mornings Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was a rest day, and Friday I ended up working out during lunch because we stayed up cleaning way too late the night before and couldn't make it out of bed. Here's what the week looked like:



We have family coming into town this weekend to celebrate Luke's birthday on Sunday, but I'm planning on getting one more workout in to make it 5 total for the week. I'm thinking I'll get up early on Saturday morning and try to get a run in before everyone else is up and going. Cheers to a wonderful weekend, and happy birthday to my sweet husband, Luke! Hopefully, I'll be back next week with a birthday recap!