Day 12-Birmingham to Nashville, Tennessee

Wednesday is the day Paul got to meet his Bike Skirt blog buddies and see parts of Birmingham on their bike tour. The nicest gals, doing so much good for their community, full of fantastic eatery ideas to keep us fueled for our trip, and wonderful hosts and educators in all things Birmingham. (Paul’s blog post here.)

Adam loves to ride the luggage cart.

After a quick driving tour of one of the beautiful neighborhoods in Birmingham, we followed one of their leads to V. Richards, a terrific, local grocery store with some fresh options for our lunch on the road.

Some nice healthy, organic, natural options at V. Richards in Birmingham.

The kids all doing Adam's monster growl.

If you put your feet up on the console next to me, and fall asleep when there's Fruit Loops around....well....

And, thankfully, our path to Tennessee was quick. I think we packed as many stops as we do on longer driving days (we know how to turn a two hour drive into four hours like nobody’s business!). And we made it into Franklin in time to check into our hotel before heading to the our good friends for dinner. Everyone should be greeted so warmly by friends!!

That's Blair right there thinking, "I didn't plan for no camera!"

The main street in downtown historic Franklin.

We had a great time, having a home-cooked meal (Karthi’s poppyseed chicken), visiting old downtown Franklin, and seeing lightnin’ bugs for our first time!  And, before we got into town too late, or the pool was closed for maintenance, we finally got to swim at the hotel pool–our first trip into the pool!

The kids caught some lightning bugs in a jar. A fantastic, fun evening for our first night into town!

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Day 11 – New Orleans to Birmingham, Alabama

Just one of the fantastic buildings on Decatur, on our way to Cafe Du Monde.

Today we traveled from New Orleans to Alabama-three states in all!  Three more post cards for Adam’s book–we’re making a book with all the states we visited;  he can even point along by the abbreviations on his map blanket.

Our first goal of the day was to visit the French Quarter, specifically Cafe Du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait!  It was hot outside already as we parked outside the Steamboat.  We walked the short distance to the Quarter and our first stop was for breakfast.  There was no line at the counter and there were two small tables to fit us all near the front counter.  We ordered two orders of beignets (six beignets total), knowing we wanted to get our lunch at the Quarter, too;  two cafe au laits, we heard the hot chocolate was good but they were out so we subbed a frozen cafe au lait, two Sprites, and a Diet Coke.  The food was delicious, we loved it!  Everyone should go once.  But the place left something to be desired for their housekeeping.

The girls sipping on sodas with their beignets at Cafe Du Monde

The inside of the Cafe Du Monde with photos of the historic cafe.

We visited the Central Grocery and popped into a store for one of Adam’s postcards and a praline to share later.  Lastly, we found seats at the Market Cafe to have our fried crawfish, crawfish etouffee, and jambalaya…so good!  Everything was perfectly prepared and, sadly, the portions were big and we left some behind.  We dined while listening to the only live Jazz band we heard whle in town;  and I would go here again if I could only pick one place to eat in the French Quarter.

The boys at lunch...Adam and Aaron cooling off with water at the table.

Welcome to The Market Cafe

The girls at lunch, all still looking pretty even after walking through the hot, sweaty streets to our lunch spot.

It was just enough time to see everything we wanted there so we hit the road, en route to Alabama.

Heading out of New Orleans we saw some of the destruction from Hurricane Katrina.  I imagine it was just a very small part of what really had been damaged, since much has been repaired and we only saw what was easily visible from the freeway.  We’re sorry for all the folks who lost their homes and businesses and we’re thankful to have visited!

Lots of damage for miles leaving New Orleans.

We spent most of our time driving through southern Mississippi and it was beautiful.  I would love to have seen more homes here, fancy and plain, and the communities we just couldn’t get to in the time we had.

At dusk we headed into Alabama and made our way to Birmingham.  It was dark as we arrived at our hotel, the Springhill Suites Marriott, our favorite hotel so far.  It was new and clean and convenient and the staff was really sweet.  After getting settled, Paul and the boys and I left the girls for some quiet while we took a little tour as we headed out for pizza.  We enjoyed seeing the beautiful homes in the few minutes we drove to Mafiaoza’s.  Our pizza was delicious and Victoria finally got her wish for pizza in our hotel room, like she’d done while traveling through Texas with Grandma and Grandpa two years ago.  And, thank you, Bike Skirt bloggers for the lead–you have impeccable taste!

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