The Carnival Fantasy will always be special to me as she was the first ship I ever set sail on. Many years later, we met again on January 31 for a 4 night trip out of New Orleans, this would be my 14th cruise, 12th with Carnival. The last time we cruised from New Orleans was on the Carnival Conquest in 2003, so we were excited to see the changes that had been made to the port itself, as last time organization was not their forte.

We drove in from Houston on the 30th for one night of Bourbon Street fun. We stayed at the Holiday Inn's Chateau Lemoyne, it is located in the French Quarter 1 block from Bourbon Street. It was an older hotel, but was very nice with lots of local flavor.

The morning of our cruise, we headed to the port around 10:30am. The parking garage was new to us, and a lot more expensive than the parking out of Galveston. However, the saying "you get what you pay for" comes into effect here, as the garage was clean, covered, and monitored 24 hours a day. They have a porter service in the garage that my friend used, basically once you pull into the garage there are the porters. You can either drop your luggage there, or just proceed to park and carry it on yourself. Read more