The Columns Hotel on St Charles Avenue is known for one of the best Happy Hours in New Orleans and is a great place to stop on a cold winter day for a hot toddy in their drawing room in front of the fireplace or on a warm summer day for a bottle of wine on their front porch while enjoying the passage of the street cars on the St Charles Line.


Of course if you are more into the funky side of life there are always other modes of transportation and less ostentatious dining establishments available…

With this being the Quatah, home to all that is weird and fantastic, some folks view Christmas a bit differently…

Well, folks, since you have been previously forewarned, you have no one to blame but yourselves for the torment you are about to endure.  As Paul Harvey might say, “And now for the rest of the story”…

Since our earlier encounter with the demons controlling internet hell and their Ghosts of Christmas minions, we have discovered that the website problems we suffered through over Christmas in New Orleans were, and still are, due to an internal programming problem with our newest laptop and not, as we believed, caused by a dysfunction of any kind with our GoDaddy hosted website.  Sorry Daddy dudes.  We have moved our operation back to an older laptop which has no problem doing all of those wonderful things my technical support staff excels at on our website.

Before the previously mentioned debacle, we were about to share with you a few photos of our Christmas in New Orleans beginning with a collage of the trees, ornaments, lighting, nutcrackers and wooden soldiers of the Quatah (that’s what we “locals” call the French Quarter)…

  The Quatah                                                                January 2, 2013

As for us, we love it all!!!!  Happy New Year, folks!  Hugs, Chuck & Kalyn.

These are the folks who really went above and beyond the call of duty for me last Christmas in actually un-wrapping a couple of the gifts under their tree to get paper, ribbon and bows to wrap my Bride’s gift.  This place may not be the fanciest in the city but it sure has the friendliest and most accommodating staff.
Another of those things we always do in the Big Easy is breakfast at Brennan's on Royal Street which usually culminates with their Bananas Foster prepared tableside and an Irish coffee (YUM!!!)…

Okay, that was the fantastic.  Now for a dose of the somewhat weird…

Another must is lunch or dinner uptown at Pascal’s Manale consisting of a few oysters shucked by the legendary “Uptown “T” and a steaming bowl of barbecued shrimp prepared by the great grandson of Pascal, Mark DeFelice…

As in many of the older dining establishments throughout the New Orleans area, Pascal’s Manale has walls adorned with photographs dating back to the dinosaur age of the plethora of people, both famous and infamous, who have passed through their doors.  Now they have one more of the “infamous” variety to add to their collection.

There are just so many great restaurants and saloons we are familiar with in this town that we really do have to prioritize them during each stay so, in addition to always going to a few, we also pay the occasional visit to the others…

Can you imagine Santa’s reaction to coming down a chimney and being greeted by this guy??!!
Others, of course, take a more traditional approach to the holiday…

In addition to Blue Nile diamonds, I am now the proud owner of an account with Mikimoto Pearls which, thus far, entitles me to near daily e-mail notifications of on-line “specials” they are offering.  Where is that damn “Spam” button????

When in New Orleans, we always stay at Le Richelieu on Charters Street in the Quatah…

Christmas present, as in Christmas past, I called upon my inherent sneakiness, and the collaboration of like-minded neighbors, to arrange delivery of my Bride’s gift completely unbeknownst to her.  And, as before, I went with the safe bet where size and color were of no consequence and the gift was guaranteed to please: earrings!!...