Our stay prior to our cruise started by flying down to NOLA and arriving around noon. This would be Sakari's very first plane trip and we didn't know what to expect.

We ended up buying her a Southwest plane to keep her busy. She compared it to the "big plane" sitting outside.

Ok, here we go. She kept busy with her plane and taking pictures of herself, but she did have some trouble with her ears.

We had picked the Drury Inn due to other cc members recommending the place, plus they offered free hot food, drinks, soda, popcorn and hot breakfast. We figured you couldn’t beat that deal! We managed to get the “cruise” deal they offered and the room was only $93.49 plus tax.

Upon arriving at this place, I thought wow, this is really nice. Everything is done up in marble and chandeliers everywhere. Very nice! We made it to our room, wow again. Very nice. Once again, marble bathroom from floor to ceiling, elegantly decorated in the room (I thought at least for the price) and a really nice high dresser that had doors that opened up with drawers behind them, a microwave and a small refrigerator. The night stands were nice wood and also the tops were marble. Great place for the price.

We went up to the roof to see the swimming pool and hot tub on the roof…um, not so great that day. Although the water was clear, the bottom was dirty (and not dirty like stuff in it, more like green film dirty and needed vacuumed). Needless to say, we did not swim or get in the hot tub after seeing this. Prior to checking out, I went up there to take some pictures and there were several people up there sun bathing, but I don’t know if they actually got into the water. (We also managed to catch the whale tail of a Carnival ship in port from up there as well).

After checking in and getting situated in our room, we took off on foot to explore the city. Beautiful place with a lot going on. I guess they were having a sea food fest while we were there. There was a lot of live entertainment going on. We walked down to the Riverfront, encountered a real train (which scared the heebie jeebies outta my 3 year old) and multiple trolleys. We stopped to take pictures at Jackson Square (the castle, horse carriage rides, fountains) and strolled along the streets looking at all of the arts being sold by the vendors. There were tons of people posing (really still) for long periods of time, dressed up weird ways, and looking like a statue. Every once in a while one would move and scare someone passing by. Hilarious! Of course, they wanted tips.

We made it to Café Du Monde and had their beignets. I was having trouble understanding our waitress (and obviously she didn’t understand me either because she didn’t bring us the right order). For $2.49 (I think it was) you get 3 small beignets LOADED with powdered sugar. Everyone raved how great these were, but to me, they are the same thing as what you get at any fair from the vendors (funnel cakes), however, I found the beignets to not be as good as a funnel cake. Ours were a little harder than what I’m use to and the amount of powdered sugar they loaded on it made you a white sticky mess. The people there didn’t seem too friendly, but the place was so busy it was VERY hard to even find a seat. When going inside to use the restroom, it was in this small cubby hole in the back in the SMALL kitchen area and there was a line. The workers were rude and kept telling people to move, bumping into everyone and didn’t bother to say excuse me or anything. At one point they took the door and slammed it shut leaving some inside waiting on the restroom and others standing along a wall waiting. If they thought this made more room, they completely misjudged that because now there were more people moving around due to having to move out of the way for the door to open every time.

We caught the street car back to our street that the hotel was on.

We decided to catch the free hot food (Kickers Meal) the hotel was offering. We did not think it was bad at all, not gourmet food, but definitely something you can make a meal out of and be satisfied. If it was bad food, you sure wouldn’t be able to tell by how many people were there eating that night. It was crazy. They offered you 3 free alcoholic drinks, per person…and they WERE STRONG! Whew! They had hot dogs, mac and cheese, nacho bar, baked potato (with fixings), veggies and dip, salads, snacks, popcorn, and a soda fountain for drinks.

We went back up to the room, visited with our 9/11 roll call online for a while chatting, then went to bed. We didn’t sleep too well though. I thought it was the excitement of the cruise the next day, but felt like I was scratching all night. Well, when we woke in the morning, we found out why. Our room was infested with red biting ants!! There were hundreds of them forming a line across the threshold from the bathroom to the sink area. Upon a little more inspection, we found lines of them going up the night stands and onto the bed. WOW! I immediately went down to let the front desk know about the room. These people were more than kind about it and very apologetic as well. They offered let me do all of my laundry there (which we did not have time for that prior to leaving, so I just made sure I shook everything out hoping we would not take any hitch hikers with us), they offered to get us a cab to the airport and pay (which we met a very nice guy on our roll call the night before and he stopped and gave us a ride) and THEY FULLY REFUNDED MY ENTIRE AMOUNT OF THE ROOM! Wow, now that was service! They told us to stay as long as we would like, however, we wanted out of that room because we were being bitten and ended up just coming down to the lobby to wait for our ride. I was not at all expecting any of this and just wanted to inform them of the situation, but they went above and beyond and we would definitely stay with them again.

I forgot to mention the free hot breakfast (eggs, sausage, biscuits/gravy etc.). It was pretty good as well. Definitely editable and filled us up prior to getting on the ship. They also had the regular cold food too (bagels, toast, muffins, cereal and so on).

We sat in the lobby, said our last goodbyes to our friends on facebook, cc, our roll call and texting while watching our girl (The Spirit) at the port until it was time to leave for our week long adventure.