We have done a lot of walking on this vacation.  I would say we average 8 – 10 miles a day going to places like City Park, Palmer Park, down the River Walk, throughout the French Quarter and of course down the famous Magazine Street. We’re at the opposite end of the French Quarter from Magazine Street and so the walk ends up being at least 4 miles each way… that’s just during the day mind you… then we come back shower off and go out to wander the French Quarter…. It’s a wonderful life for sure.

One of the places we’ve been to visit on our hot walks down Magazine Street is Root Square as the timing turned out we were in the neighbourhood at the right time (a senior dinner hour… lol… about 5 pm) we were tired and hot and hungry.  So we decided to check it out.

We opted to dine upstairs on the beautiful wraparound balcony instead of downstairs where the meal options are set and a little pricy for our needs.  When you’ve been walking around the city for a few hours and are hot and sticky it’s not the most opportune time to have a 2 1/2 hour dining experience.

One of the things I’m beginning to notice about the restaurants in NOLA is that if you order a lemonade and it’s ‘fresh’ or made from real lemon juice and not the mix or tap stuff then the food is likely going to be pretty good.

This lemonade was fabulous, a little tart, just how I like it and for my partner in crime who wanted it a bit sweeter the waiter was kind enough to bring out some simple syrup to help it out.

We started with the Coffee and  Strawberry Cured Salmon which was accompanied by several pickled items…. including green strawberries… interesting… and actually better tasting than I had expected, green tomatoes, peaches and heirloom carrots. The salmon was lovely.

P had the Lamb Meatball Rigatoni which was pretty good and it was easy to tell it was all made from scratch.

I had the Tandoori Roasted Monkfish (something I’ve always wanted to try – I’ve heard it described as the less expensive lobster) and it came with a Harissa Yogurt and some pickles… they seem to really love to pickle things here….and they are good at it.

This is a newer restaurant in New Orleans but if you’re ever down Magazine Street it’s definitely worth a try.

What is so cool about New Orleans?  The people?  The culture?  The city?  It’s all those things…. the wildlife…  in and outside of the city is something to behold.  😉  We took a little swamp tour and it was amazing…..

Though there are lots of tours to choose from we decided on the Honey Island Swamp Tour through Cajun Encounters… Captain Greg was our trusty tour guide…

It was a very fun tour, we chose to do the small boat tour which is up to the maximum of 10 people and there were actually only 6 of us…. it made for a very nice trip….. Captain Greg seemed to know exactly where all interesting wildlife was…. we came upon a very cool hand-sized spider that I don’t have a picture of since it seemed to be a little camera shy… but we did catch this cool dude…. little grasshopper…

The grasshoppers were huge by my humble Canadian standards and the racoons were small but seriously cute. You’ll notice him having a little treat….. we’ll talk about that later…

The surroundings were stunning!

And of course then there were the crocodiles….

A little closer???

Awe… we can get a better look than that….

These crocs are very cool…. and there were quiet a few of them in a certain section of the swamp…. they swarmed to our boat as our captain gave them a little treat….. and gave us an opportunity for some fabulous pictures…but that wasn’t all…

There were still the wild pigs to visit…. as they grunted and snorted and ate up the treats our trusty captain had for them….we also stopped by one of the local neighbourhoods…

Certainly an cool way to live….

 All in all it was a very cool adventure.  I have to say that I really appreciated the tour provided by Captain Greg, he was great at stopping, shutting the motor off and letting us listen to the peacefulness of the swamp. He also provided us with a numerous facts about the swamp and many opportunities to photograph the beauty.

I must admit though that I was torn walking away from this day trip.  As much as I loved the opportunity to get up close and personal to many of the animals on this day, knowing that they were hopped up on marshmallows because of people like me was not lost on me.

You see, the animals come up to the boat and hang around for all those wonderful picture opportunities because they want the treats that are provided by the drivers of the boats… and their drug of choice is the marshmallow.  All the Captain had to do it throw one of those pillowy blobs of sugar into the water and the crocs would turn and come in our direction….yes folks… we were hanging out with the ‘pusher’ and I have to admit that I’m not sure how I feel about that… they are essentially addicted to sugar…. something they can ONLY get by hanging out by the boats….I suppose we can all think a little about our addictions….

We ended our day by going back to The Joint…. just had to get a meal and it was worth the walk from our hotel following the trip…

A half rack of ribs… with a side salad with smoked tomato and onion dressing and the drink… which I couldn’t remember the name of here…. is actually ‘Mr. Whiskers’ and it was just as good the second time around….

The whole meal was fantastic and the ribs are really quite amazing…. and their chairs … were even cooler the second time around.

I know that I can’t keep posting every meal that we have here in NOLA especially since we eat so darned many of them…. so from now on I’ll only post the exceptional ones….

We stumbled onto Red Fish Grill by accident… you know… we were out… walking around… found ourselves hungry for dinner and there it was… a seafood restaurant…. and trust me this was a winner.

It is casual and interesting….

They started us off with bread…. in this…

It was so fresh, so warm, so diet busting worthy that I can’t even actually show it to you because even though we requested a SECOND…. it was gone before I could snap a picture…. besides a photo really wouldn’t do it justice.

Let’s start with 1/2 dozen Oysters on the half shell…

And a Watermelon Caprese for the faint of heart….

Next a fish dinner for each of us….. Wood Grilled Lemonfish with Kale and Sweet Potato Puree….. seriously delicious….

And for my partner in crime… Wood Grilled Red Fish with Crab…  also amazing… yup had a taste of that too!

And you have to know that I don’t normally order dessert…. just generally too full to enjoy it… but when you’re on vacation and you have a meal that is so stinkin good… you just can’t help yourself but order the dessert…. cause you have to know it will also be amazing….

And home made Bananas Foster was truly that!

This place is so good…everything was seasoned and cooked exceptionally well…. nothing need to be added…. and we’ll be back at least one more time before we head home…. this is one of those places that you go to try many of their dishes…. next time I think it will be something blackened…. !