Do you have change for a French Quarter?

As you can see from our posts and also from our stories, fatigue has taken a course on the Tate Family during our 3-week escapade throughout the country. Our typical 7AM wake-up calls have snoozed until 8 or 9, and we've even missed a few continental breakfasts just for a few extra minutes of rest before our jam-packed days of travel. However, we've survived the travel tiredness and continued forward as much as possible and I don't think it has slowed us down overall.

When we woke up and got checked out of the hotel in New Orleans we walked once again all the way through the French Quarter and down toward the famous French Market to check it out. We stopped off at "Cafe du Monde" which is supposedly the first coffee shop located down in the French Quarter and we all ate breakfast there. They have French donuts known as "beignets" (pronounced ben-yays) that are covered in powdered sugar and quite delicious actually. I got a funny picture of a table of kids with a mountain of these things as they stuffed their faces.

After breakfast we continued through to the French Market which is similar to many other open-air markets you may have seen, such as in Charleston, SC if you've been there. There are plenty of homemade trinkets, crafts, and other assorted goods for sale and we walked the length of the market a few times just browsing all the stuff on each aisle. PS: I'm not sure why at every open-market I've seen some creepy old lady with no teeth trying to sell handmade soap, but either way other than that small factor that creeps me out, the market was legit. We continued back up the street and stopped in various shops along the way to get some air condition and beat the heat until we finally could get back to our hotel to pick up our luggage and board our train. Our afternoon train from New Orleans to Memphis was lengthy and actually rather a rough ride. I don't know what it was about the train we got on, but it was quite the bumpy one. Who knew trains could have turbulence?

Dad and I finished the Star Wars saga on the way to Memphis and Kelsey finished an entire book from cover to cover. Mom caught some shuteye and we were in Memphis by about 10pm and able to get a rent-a-car to our hotel and do some quite-overdue and necessary laundry. We relaxed in the hotel and went to bed pretty late, but planned a full day in Memphis in the morning and were looking forward to spending some quality time in the land of blues, country, and rock 'n roll.

~Josh