Music, Art, and Vampires

Of course, we had to start off our last full day in New Orleans with early morning beignets from Cafe DuMonde. We enjoyed the beautiful weather and indulged in the doughy, powder sugary goodness while looking over the Mississippi River.

Next up: shopping! We walked over to the French Market to buy some New Orleans goodies and went in some of the other shops along Decatur Street. One of those shops was the Pepper Palace. This place was awesome and deadly at the same time. They have free samples of just about every salsa, hot sauce, and more that they sell. I love spicy foods, so I decided to go for one of the hotter salsas. Bad idea. I happened to try their scorpion salsa and my face got all red and my throat was on fire. However, I would definitely suggest checking this place out if you are in town- just be more careful about what you are tasting!

After we spent plenty of time shopping, we continued exploring the French Quarter and took advantage of the many musicians playing live on the streets. One of the bands was The Smoking Time Jazz Club. You can see a short video below of them performing one of their songs. Later on at night we also saw some of Davide Martello’s performance. Davide goes by the musician name of Klavierkunst and plays beautifully on his piano. I enjoyed his music so much that I even bought one of his CDs. You can check out some segments of his tracks on his website.

The Smoking Time Jazz Club

Then we headed to The Beach to get some drinks and bask in what felt like 90 degree weather on their outdoor patio. After being entertained for a few hours, we ventured off to check out some of the different artists selling their work on the street. Although you are not allowed to take photos of their artwork, we did get the names of a few artists whose work really stood out. My favorite was the work by Alan Zakem. Zakem Art creates contemporary pieces of city nightlife that are colorful and eye catching. Soon, we headed to Pierre Maspero’s for dinner and then caught some of the St. Patrick’s Day parade after we left.

Next we went back to Jackson Square to get ready for our Vampire Tour! This is a tour we could not pass up. We booked the tour with Haunted History Tours, and got to walk around the French Quarter while learning about the different potentially vampire related incidents that happened all over the city. After an exciting day and a spooky night, we wrapped up our spring break adventure and got some rest for the long drive home we had ahead of us the next day.