A New Orleans Thanksgiving: Hotel Review

For a change this year, we went to see our daughter for Thanksgiving instead of her coming home.  Part of the motivation was for us to come see New Orleans where we had never spent time despite this being her third year at Tulane.  The other being that as a third-year med school student, she really didn’t have the time to spend traveling to us.  For 55,000 American miles each we got a direct flight there and First Class on the way home.

Lot’s of hotels to choose from in New Orleans since it is such a tourist town.  I am on a quest to get 30 stays at Hilton to reup my Diamond status which I had received from matching my Marriott Platinum status last Jan.  I have to say Diamond is pretty nice, usually resulting in an upgrade wherever I go.  Even with Hilton, there were half a dozen hotels just in the downtown area.  I choose the Doubletree that was near everything, but not on the water or in the French Quarter.  I saved about $100/night by choosing to stay a few blocks away – well worth it.  The hotel is right along S. Peters and adjacent to Canal Street, which is equivalent to the Vegas Strip for New Orleans.  However, we were not bothered by the noise or lights of Canal St.

The room was nice, but pretty much what you would expect from a Doubletree.  The bed was pretty comfortable.

One thing I did really like was the mini-fridge.  It was a real fridge, unlike the college dorm room version that you typically find and could keep stuff pretty cold.

As usual, we received the Gold/ Diamond benefit of free breakfast during our stay.

Although the breakfast was nothing to write home about.

The views at night from the hotel were great and you can see on the left that we were right across from the Harrah’s Casino.  I got my wife out of there with a net loss of only $3.25 which counts as a win in my book.

One little weird thing that was strange is that the property is on a triangular piece of land with the point on Canal St.  That is where the original hotel entrance was, but now they have turned it into a Pinkberry yogurt place.  They left the original Doubletree sign which I thought was a little weird.  The actual entrance is now into the main building off of S. Peters.  One other note, if you simply follow Peters St., which become N. Peters after crossing Canal St., you will be led right to the best of the tourist locations, including the French Quarter.