Returned yesterday from my annual winter trip to New Orleans. No cruise this year, though. We stayed at the Pontchartrain Hotel on St Charles, once a famous hotel (they have a display of silver plaques with the names of stars who once had suites named after them when they stay -- Richard Burton, Bob Hope, etc.) They are part way through a renovation, but as is it's a pretty nice place with (currently) reasonable rates for the area. They'll close down after Jazz Fest for another $10 million in renovations and then (hopefully) reopen for next year's holiday season.
Alas, the wife developed an infected tooth, and had a root canal started on Monday, which obviously cut into her enjoyment of my visit and limited the dining we had planned. The dining room had a somewhat limited menu but the food itself was great. We also went to the Sunday Jazz bruch at the Copeland Cheesecake -- even with her bad tooth she could enjoy gumbo and cheesecake. I had breakfast each day at the Avenue Cafe just a bit further up St Charles (1907). Some of the offerings were a bit chi-chi (fresh-squeezed veggie juices, etc.) but they brought in great pastries and the coffee was up to NO-best. The French-pressed chicory coffee was especially good.
While we visited friends, etc., the touristy thing we did was go to the D-Day Museum. It took about 2 1/2 hours to go through the main museum, and on the whole it was pretty well-done. I was especially interested to see they had an enigma machine on display. While I had never been, my wife had, and when she was there the 'canteen' was set up in the period -- period menu, wait-staff in period costume, period music, etc. However, that is now under new management and all the period stuff was gone. Duck confit wasn't common in American diners in the 1940s so far as I know. Still, we had a good time.