We arrived late in the evening on our Southwest flight from Dallas and headed straight to the Sheraton Metairie for the night. We slept in a bit before heading down to the hotel restaurant for a late breakfast. After we fueled up, we hopped in the rental car and headed downtown to check out the Sugar Bowl festivities in New Orleans.
Day 1
We street parked the car on Tchoupitoulas Street and headed towards Canal. Our first stop was the Harrah’s Casino (soon to be rebranded as Caesars) to do a little bit of gambling.
Our luck at the casino wasn’t great and we hoped that the Longhorns would have a better showing than we did. We left the casino and headed towards the Sugar Bowl parade that would be rolling down Decatur Street. Along the way, we stopped off at one of the souvenir tents on Canal. We already had enough Texas gear and decided to pass on anything new.
From the souvenir tent, it was a short walk down to the parade route and crowds were already lining both sides of the street. The parade reached us around 3:00p and was led by riders on horseback followed by the University of Washington cheerleaders and marching band.
I expected the parade to be somewhat short but, this is New Orleans and they threw a proper parade for the game.
It took almost an hour for the entire parade to pass us by and we made our way back to the car around 4:00p. Our plans were to spend New Year’s Eve at a party hosted by some of my old college friends and we headed back to the hotel to freshen up and change.
We partied into the wee hours of the morning before returning to the Sheraton Metairie to get some sleep.
Day 2
We checked out of the hotel around 10:30a and headed off in search of some brunch. Since we were staying in the Central Business District that evening, to be close to the game, and our first order of business was finding some coffee.
The always delicious French Truck Coffee appeared on the left side of the road so we pulled over to get caffeinated.
Coffee in hand, we headed down Magazine Street into the Lower Garden District. Mrs. ATX made us a brunch reservation for 12:30p so we had some time to kill. It was New Year’s Day so some of the shops were closed and, the streets were pretty empty when we arrived. We did a bit of shopping and popped into a local bar to watch part of the LSU/Wisconsin game before heading towards brunch.
Brunch today was at Basin, a great local seafood and cocktail bar. The atmosphere was fantastic and the food was even better. Unfortunately, they were short staffed and the wait times took forever. It took 30 minutes for our appetizers to come out and the entire brunch took almost two hours. The food was top notch though.
Brunch wrapped up around 2:30p and Mrs. ATX did some more shopping before we headed down to our hotel for the evening, the Le Méridien New Orleans. After checking in, we dropped our bags in the room and headed out for the afternoon. We decided to head over to the French Quarter and passed by the Texas team hotel, the New Orleans Marriott, along the way.
Our first stop was the Hotel Monteleone and the always popular Carousel Bar. The hotel was still decorated for Christmas and the bar was packed with fans getting ready for the game.
The bar was too full to be enjoyable so we decided to bail and head down the street to meet one of my FlyerTalk frequent flyer buddies who lives in the Quarter. We had drinks on the terrace before heading back to the hotel to get ready for the game. He kindly offered to give us a ride back to the hotel and we spotted this sweet Cadillac along the way.
2024 Allstate Sugar Bowl
After getting game day ready at the hotel, we started the walk down Poydras Street towards the Caesars Superdome. The crowds increased with each block as we approached the stadium.
Security checkpoints were located in tents outside of the Superdome and we were through quickly.
Once inside, we made our way to the upper level of the stadium to find our seats. We stopped along the way in the concourse to watch the end of the Michigan/Alabama game on the TVs throughout the Superdome.
We got to our seats with plenty of time to watch the pregame festivities. The last time I was in the Superdome I had the chance to watch LSU beat Clemson to win a National Championship and we were hoping to see Texas do the same.
Over the next few hours we were treated to a fantastic football game. While Texas had the chance to win the game as time expired, unfortunately the Longhorns came up short.
With Texas’ season over, we headed back to the hotel and packed up before calling it a night. Though Texas couldn’t pull out the win, we still had a fantastic weekend in New Orleans.
