Finally in New Orleans, LA

We’re in Baltimore airport where he is crawling around, getting

 some food and some Tylenol because even though he doesn’t have a fever, maybe that will dull the tooth pain enough to knock him out for the next flight.  I thought about Benadryl too to ensure he slept, but resisted.  John and I got some breakfast and get to the gate for the next flight in time to be in the

 middle group of families that board.  So, we get to sit together and this time there is more room on the flight, so no one sits by us.  Also, there are 3 babies that are Oscar’s age and younger, so if there is crying, maybe it won’t be our kid.  Or people could mistake him for someone else’s kid….but this time, it’s

sleeping baby 1

  too much even for the ever inquisitive Oscar and he is asleep before we take off.  He’s so asleep that he sleeps through take off and the noise, sleeps through me placing him in the seat between me and John and sleeps until we start our descent into New Orleans.  There were smaller naps for John and I, but at least we have arrived in Louisiana with only 5 minutes of crying when he wakes up from such a deep sleep and can’t figure out where he is.

sleeping baby 2

  And it’s an intermittent 5 minutes that is more scared than loud crying.  Some water for him to drink and clear his ears and it’s over and he is looking around again as we land, deplane and get down to baggage claim.  The euphoria of having made it with all of this extraneous shit that we have never had 

sleeping boys 1

 to travel with before is heady stuff for me and John.  The bag being at baggage claim was the capstone that even there not being a changing table in the bathroom can dull.  We find our way out to the transportation routes and the 

sleeping baby 4 (this was a 3 hour flight)

RTA bus pulls up as we’re walking to the stop.  $4 gets us, all of our stuff and Oscar to within 8 blocks of our hotel on Canal street which totally beats the $48 for the hotel shuttle or the $36 for a taxi.  And while we might have gotten a lot closer to the hotel, we would have missed the little eatery Merchant, which

this is Oscar's"where the hell am I" face

  we stopped and ate at because it said “crepes” on the sign.  We were sold.  They had a couple of little tables outside (we thought it was wonderful because it’s 60 degrees and sunny, but they were horrified inside because it’s “winter”)  and I got a delicious almond 

 crepe, decaf Café Americano for John and a baguette with prosciutto, goat cheese and balsamic that tasted like heaven.  So, New Orleans is already living up to food expectations from the jumping off point, which is good, because our hotel is about to bring us crashing back to reality.  We check in to the Sheraton, yes, the Sheraton on Canal which costs over $200 a night because Ferris is paying for the conference here and it’s here at the Marriot next door that was full.  We are

our first Louis Armstrong statue

   on the 28^th floor and when you open the shutters in our huge room with the huge bed, you see all of New Orleans laid out before you.  Floor to ceiling window takes your breath away and Lake Pontchartrain looks like a great lake in the distance, but there is no white stuff on the ground here.   So, how is this hotel letting me down?  No

John actually found Mardi Gras beads in the tiny tree here

  small fridge in the room that I can put Oscar’s unused food in.  I mean, I knew that it would most likely be stocked with things that we would pay $20 for if we took them out of the minibar, but I still expected it to be here and it’s not.  The other problem, no wifi in the room without paying extra.  Are you serious? 

Yes, I'm posting a picture of food

  Okay, we’ve run into this before at higher end hotels, but the main lobby has wifi, so I’ll just blog from there.  No, the wifi in the lobby is broken or something, so there is no wifi in this hotel for us without paying a lot more for it.  And we’re not going to.  I can 

nice view that almost makes up for other deficits

 stay for $39 at a motel 6 and get free wifi and a fridge….come on and give me a break big hotels.  It’s not like you’re a cruise ship and this is extraordinarily hard to have going on.  One of the two and I wouldn’t be so pissed off, but I’m feeling mad for all the money that I didn’t pay to stay here.  So,  I’ll get over it, but if it were on my dime, we’d be having a fight about it.  So, now you know why the 

a view down Canal street

blog is so behind, I can’t load pictures onto the tablets and I can’t lug the laptop around town running into wifi at some place we stop and eat.  But the other thing that bugs me about it, I can’t pull up my cool app I downloaded on historic New Orleans on my tablet.  I have to stay within range of some wifi somewhere in order to load the stories of where we are walking and what we are seeing, so I’m going to have to get a smartphone that is 4G or something.  Unlike Europe, which is a blanket hotspot at this point, the United States still wields connectivity to the internet and holds it hostage….