Mississippi River Day 17: New Orleans to home

This article is part of a series about our recent vacation traveling down the Mississippi River. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.

We had a late flight home, so we tossed around ideas for things to do in New Orleans for the early part of the day. By popular demand (all of us), we made a return visit to Café du Monde for another breakfast of beignets. I loved the café au lait the other day, so I ordered a large one this time. Unfortunately this means that it comes in a Styrofoam cup rather than a modest china cup, and it isn’t nearly as satisfying that way. I recommend the small.

We returned to the hotel to finish packing, and the skies opened up again with more torrential rain, lightning, and thunder. We enjoyed our (dry) view of the storm for quite a while, then the rain let up a bit and we checked out of the hotel, walked over to the Riverfront Marketplace to pick up some last-minute souvenirs, and then returned to our hotel, which was about the only place that wasn’t crowded, for lunch.

It started to rain again at the airport just as we arrived, and after reaching our gate there was yet another torrential rain and thunderstorm. The airport reported about 2.3 inches of rain that hour. Our flight was delayed a bit by the fact that the ground crew can’t work outside when there is lightning, but fortunately Frontier held our connecting flight in Denver long enough for us, and our luggage, to just make it.

The weather in the Bay Area felt especially cool and dry on our return.

Mississippi River crossings today: 0
July 20, 2012