Steam Wheeler Natchez in New Orleans. You can take day and evening dinner cruises.

Even with softening of the stay at home COVID-19 rules, it is clear that we will be spending a great deal of time in our homes, especially if you or your loved ones have underlying concerns. To help with the boring nature of being constantly at home, my husband and I decided to take a virtual vacation. We picked a location we would be happy to visit (mostly based upon the food we wanted to eat) and I devised a virtual cruise to New Orleans.

We had so much fun spending the weekend on “vacation”, I thought that I would share our ventures and encourage you to do the same. Note: We agreed that we would not work on anything related to work or home unless it had something to do with the cruise.

I chose to do it as a “cruise” because cruises come with many things other vacations don’t necessarily have.

Most cruises have a theme.
Amazing food.
There is typically a schedule.
There are built-in activities and entertainment.
Many times, you never leave the ship.

Here is what we did…

Our theme was New Orleans. This included learning to cook some New Orleans foods and ensuring that we had jazz throughout the weekend.

Since we chose New Orleans for the food, the first thing I did was develop a menu. This was also necessary given we are not going to the grocery store and you have to order your groceries in advance. Click here for our original menu and shopping list. Click here for our actual menu with comments about the recipes. Both include links to the recipes.

Once I knew what food we would have, I developed a schedule and activity list. I printed it on fancy paper and presented to my husband in preparation for the trip. It includes what type of clothing for certain events and when we were guests and when we were ship staff. Click here for our schedule and activity list.

For our shore excursion (luckily we had beautiful weather), we went to the South Platte River and took a walk with our dog, Cleo. Cleo swam in the river and we saw beautiful turtles in the little lake close by. People were spread out and most wore masks.

Be willing to modify your schedule and menu. We found that we only ate 2 meals most days because we wanted to spend our calories on the wonderful brownies we made. We also ended up with leftovers. Some we froze for another day and some we continued to eat throughout the week.

We are looking forward to our next cruise. France? Ethiopia? Italy?

Please Comment with Your Ideas

If you decide to take a virtual cruise or devise some other way to spice up our time at home, please send them to me via the comments and I will be happy to post them for others to share.

Dancing Links

Jazz Concerts

Al Hirt / Pete Fountain - We watched this one. It was great!