The RIMS conference next year is in New Orleans, so Kelly, Jordan and I headed out to the "In-Site Tour". This is the best kind of travel because there are no clients to impress or prospects to win over. It is actually reversed where the hotels, event venues and restaurants are wining and dining us, trying to win US over!!
We got to tour a lot of cool places, got to eat lots of great food and did a TON of walking!!
Our hotel was right on the Riverwalk so there was always something going on, and always something to see.
I loved being right on the river walk for my morning jogs. I looked forward to waking up every morning and loved running down the river walk and circling back to my hotel through the French Quarter. Not to mention the joy of running on a flat surface the entire time!
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Most of our meals were in hotels (which was not bad) but made it difficult for me to order my "healthy" alternatives...but at least everyone was serving fish...red fish...everywhere we went it was redfish. The first night however we ate at Bourbon House Restaurant and it was delicious. They served Frozen Bourbon Milk Punch for dessert and I indulged. It was SOOO good, and I HAD to drink Jordans since she is preggo. It was too good to go to waste.
(I might have also indulged on some chocolates that they left on my pillow in the hotel...thankfully jordan and I had joining rooms so she came and took them away...needless to say my stomach was not happy with me at about 4 o'clock in the morning...lesson learned)
Another highlight of the trip was getting to go to Mardi Gras world where they keep all of the parade floats. These floats are HUGE! It was soo cool to see them up close and personal. We were told that these were part of the "Orpheus Tribe" We got to see where they are made, all the intricate details up close and personal. Did you know that there is a "theme" each year and they change the flowers on all the floats to go along with the theme? It was really neat to be there and I am super excited to go back for the conference in April because this is where the opening reception is going to be held!
We spent the rest of our day with more walking and more hotel tours. We had a short break, and Jordan has never had a beignet so we swung her by Cafe Du Monde (no not the real one in the quarter...but better than nothing, and the only thing we had time for). We thought this would be an opportune place for her to take her 14 week pregnancy pic, and I had fun drawing the number 14 on her belly with powdered sugar!
That evening we had a progressive dinner through the quarter. Good food and history all around but the night ended a progressive dessert reception through Arnaud's restaurant. I limited myself to champagne and resisted temptation...that is until we reached the room with the fresh to order Bananas Foster. It was AHHHMazing. Then the final "room" of the progressive tour was a bourbon street balcony, complete with tons of beads and boas!!
The next day was a half day and we spent a lot of time in hotels, suites and private venue space. By this point, we typically know what we want to do for our event and possibly even have pencil holds on a couple of options...but NOLA is a tough city for a conference because people do not want to hang around the convention center....so we did some private touring the rest of the evening on our own.
We had our final meal at Bourbon House restaurant because we were NOT going to leave New Orleans without having oysters!
It was great trip and we have our work cut out for us planning an amazing conference and kick ass event for next April!!
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