New Orleans' WWII Museum

Day 12: New Orleans, here we come!  Last night, we slept in a Bass Pro parking lot in Baton Rouge after devouring a lot of southern dishes.  My sleep was a little restless and I had crazy dreams.  Chad has a streak of sleeping really well and had no complaints. 

In the early morning hours, an older gentleman, who looked like he worked for Bass Pro, pulled into the parking lot and was shining a flash light onto the vegetation around the building. We think he was looking for people sleeping or camping on the grounds. He didn’t bother us car-campers, so we went back to bed.

We packed up and hit the road early to make sure we were in New Orleans within the next couple of hours. We intended to hit the WWII museum when it opened at 10 a.m. Back when we were in Kansas City, a policeman had told us about the WWII museum (after we had mentioned we had just visited the WWI memorial) and that we should plan to spend the whole day there because there was so much stuff to read.

The highway was rolling under our tires and we were on our way. Until morning traffic caught up to us. I guess the only way into New Orleans from Baton Rouge was a really long bridge? To the left the water went on without an end in sight, while on the right there was a train track mounded above the water with trees boarding the edge. No place to go but straight!

We stayed on the bridge for hours. We tried to use the time to catch up with phone calls to family, but sometimes the signal would drop. It makes sense, there’s a lot of water and not a lot of service towers. I think there might have been an accident with a gravel truck? We saw a police car and a large, freshly swept area of red dirt.

We rolled off the bridge and headed downtown towards the museum to look for parking. Parking is extremely interesting! We searched the online forums and tried to understand the rules before we accidentally got towed, booted, ticketed, smash-and-grabbed, etc. The best situation we could put our car into was committing to an actual parking garage right next to the WWII museum. Safety first!

Chad was really flustered from driving and dealing with trying to park while avoiding people coming up to our windows. To calm down, we skipped over to a corner café that happened to have a lot of plants inside.

Talk about grounding energy; we needed this space! I was able to pee in a lovely, elegant bathroom (I tried to refrain from telling Chad I had to go, it would have burst his stress level 😉) and we bought a large coffee to go. All better and more relaxed!

The streets near the entrance to the building were crawling with kids just recently dropped off by school buses. We would be touring with the school and retired folks! It was Friday, so the clientele is a little different than a weekend.

Large planes hung in the entry way, huge machinery lined the walls and a replica train with the old-school ticker-time-schedule greeted us when we walked through the front doors. Oh man, there was so much to see.

We snagged a movie ticket, an interactive submarine exhibit ticket and headed out to look everything before our scheduled times at the events. There were interactive screens everywhere, informational videos around every corner, artifacts, posters, and audio recordings of people telling their stories about their part in the war.

The movie was inside a large auditorium, absolutely packed with tourists, and we watched a film overview narrated by Tom Hanks about the war sequence for 48 minutes. The seats vibrated and shook us as the trains pulled away from the stations full of soldiers and when airplanes were shooting at enemy planes with machine guns.

Fake snow fell from the ceiling when winter war videos were on the screen and interactive elements came out of the stage floor throughout the film. I liked the movie and elements! Chad and I agreed that the movie didn’t get into the details of the war, which was a bummer, but they probably expected us to walk through the exhibits to learn more.

The interactive submarine was kinda a blow. Literally. Each person was assigned a position inside this mock-up submarine at an operating station to collaborate on a mission together. The mock-up was meh. The story moved on whether I pushed the buttons or not (super not as interactive as I thought it was going to be).

The submarine ended up having a misfiring torpedo and it struck the side wall causing the ship to sink. This was a reenactment of events that actually took place and it was a neat idea. I think it would have been more fun for kids to experience.

Exhausted from walking, reading, listening, learning, and navigating the large facilities, we finally trekked out of the museum after 7+ hours. We highly recommend going to this museum and learning about the war events. Make sure you spend all day there!

We left the museum after 4 p.m. and noticed all of the streets were clogged with icky rush hour traffic. Instead of trying to deal with that, we called a to-go order from a restaurant for shrimp and grits for pick up. We walked a few blocks through the business district, grabbed the food and sat down to eat at a local park.

The food was really rich and good tasting, but we were cheated so badly. $27 for two little bowls of food (which you then combined into one). Oh, we were not happy. Chad then hunted for the best fried chicken we could get our hands on and marched back to the parking garage with a set mission.

According to our internet research, which is of the utmost reliability ;) , the Travel Channel, Food Network, and the James Beard Foundation claims Willie Mae's to have the best fried chicken in the World. It must be good!

We ended up driving to a section of New Orleans that is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. The restaurant was located on the corner and had a policeman standing outside keeping watch. As Chad and I were getting out of the car, a small truck pulled up next to us and a guy slyly walked out from a house to greet the driver.

I’m guessing they were trading Pokémon cards, but the plastic baggie looked pretty small. Maybe it was a micro SD card? Ya, he was probably buying a micro SD card from the guy. But, the trade was taking a little while. They seemed sheepish with us only 4 feet from them.

Anyways, the cop at the front door was really nice. He said where he watched us park was a good place to avoid a tow or ticket. He motioned for us to sit down outside on the benches and wait for a server to show us to our table. We didn’t have to wait long and was shown to a table in the back of the establishment. All of the tables were filled and we were able to sneak in without a long wait.

Clientele was predominately tourists from out of state with a sprinkling of locals. We ordered two plates of fried chicken which came with our selected sides of green beans, red beans and rice. For sure needed to add corn bread sides, how could we not? The food was up in no time and we had a flinger lick’n good time. We really liked the breading and the moist chicken. The green beans were a hit! Super flavorful and tasted nothing like green beans.

We ducked out of town to a Cracker Barrel in Slidell for the night. Super tired from walking all day and worn out, we got ready for bed and hit the hay. It was a really good day at the museum and we highly recommend visiting the WWII museum to learn about the events and really take in how it all happened.

If in town and wanting to get some good chicken, head over during the day for a bite to eat. Remember to hug a tree later or ground yourself in some other way because the energy of New Orleans can bring you all over the board. It rained that night so the car was washed clean and the air smelled like spring.