I flew back to Chicago late last evening and caught a late train back to my apartment. I knew it was going to rain around the time of my arrival but the weather was so bad that it grounded me at DFW for about 2 hours before I was grounded in the plane at O'Hare for a little over an hour. Ended up scarfing down Chinese takeout at the airport since I wasn't keen on ordering food on my way to my apartment. If there's any positive thing to come out off the prolonged flight, I didn't have to walk through the rain back to my place.

I spent 4 days in Baton Rouge with Ben. He was working most of the days, but out of the four days, we had one day for ourselves. We decided to take a day trip to New Orleans and try Urban Adventures Quest. It's a combination of puzzles and trivia on your phone; it tells you to find certain sculptures or places, look for certain clues to answer questions, and you get points for right answers. It saved us having to plan out an itinerary for the day and took us through really interesting sights in New Orleans.





The sun was beating down on us through most of the quest. The hardest trivia by far was to find which columns matched the reflections on our phone. I think we circled this sculpture over a dozen times, probably looking insane to everyone else. I was wearing something different when we started this quest (jeans and a sleeveless top) but the weather made it unbearable. Luckily, there was an outlet mall close by so both of us updated our clothes for the weather (Ben got a snazzy pair of shorts, myself a new maxi and wide-brim hat). With brand new clothes and a bit of cooling off from the mall air conditioning, we set back out feeling a bit more refreshed. Part of the quest had us walking along the water so we enjoyed a cooler breeze as we looked out at the ferry boats. Eventually, we came to part of our quest that called for us to ride the trolley to the French Market. The trolley takes exact change so we ducked into the nearby aquarium and got a 39 cent postcard to remember! Compared to the train fare back in Chicago, the trolley costs here are extremely affordable.





I researched several places to eat and we had tentatively decided on Brennan's since I had read that the original bananas foster started there. Unfortunately we came after 2PM and the menus had changed for the evening. Not to be disappointed, we walked around the corner and ended up at the Royal House Oyster Bar. Ended up with the Oyster Duo (3 Rockefeller oysters and 3 Royale oysters ) while Ben ordered a sizable oyster po-boy. I was dead-set on having afternoon tea at Sucré but that special wasn't offered on Mondays/Tuesdays. I was actually pretty crushed by the missed opportunity but it gives us a reason to head back to New Orleans another time. We still bought a box of macarons and tried their key lime pie. Heavenly! We couldn't pass up the original Café du Monde so we got one plate and a frozen cafe au lait. I had forgotten how filling those beignets can get but we still had the rest of our urban quest to continue so the walk helped soothe our bellies.




Our last quest took us straight to Bourbon Street where we came up the Famous Door Bar to read all the famous people that had entered. Since we took a lot of breaks and meandered around the area, we wondered how we would fare on the leader board. We ended up tying for 4th place. Go team Lazy Space Godzillas!!!

As is always with every break spent with Ben, time travels way too fast. I'll be starting my rotations next week and as promised before, probably my thoughts and expectations about each rotation will be written down here. I have a fair idea of how I want to prepare for Family Med so I just need to get down to it. There's still a couple more paperwork that I need to take care of, probably will have it done by this Friday. Until then, enjoy as much of this break as I can!