Monday, March 11th.   Monday is probably not the top day for visiting New Orleans, but we’re both excited about the visit since neither of us have been to this exciting city.  It’s a short 85 mile drive and we arrive by lunch time.  Our hotel is downtown, but we can’t locate any EV chargers downtown on our charger data bases.  I guess the people of New Orleans are very focused on electric cars.  Fortunately, the Whole Foods, at 5600 Magazine St. has two chargers in their covered parking lot and we head there for lunch to scope it out.   As usual, two gasoline cars are parked in the EV charger spots.  It takes close to 10 minutes until I’m able to get the reluctant customer clerk to make a public announcement, but by then the shopper is already on her way to the car.   If think eventually as EV cars are more common, more EV drivers will complain about this crap and eventually (hopefully soon), most EV charger parking spaces will be well identified with parking signs prohibiting gas cars.   I know at the Whole Foods in South Beach, the EV charger spot is occupied 90% of the time with gas engine cars.   It’s a big inconvenience and it’s a recurring problem for us.  Remember the dreaded Woodlands debacle.   Maybe we should bust their side window and put a dead battery on their car seat.  Or maybe we should have an EV car consideration reminder and EV cars should descend on gas stations across the country on the same date and hour and block the entrances to gas stations for a ten minute protest.

Back to reality, after lunch we head to our hotel downtown.  Juan gets permission from the Whole Foods manager to park the car, charging overnight in their lot (which saves us at least $35 on downtown parking) and he takes the St. Charles Street trolley back to downtown.   I take the same train the next morning to retrieve the fully charged car, charging gratis.

We take in downtown New Orleans, do the usual site seeing and head out in the evening for some Cajun seafood and local jazz.  Seeing as its Monday night, the town is a bit quiet, but the French Quarter is always open for business.

Looks like it was a big deal when these two EV chargers were installed at the Whole Foods in New Orleans, as they had this ribbon cutting ceremony to inaugurate the project.

Free charging, compliments of Whole Foods in New Orleans. We had lunch here- Whole Foods is a food favorite for me. We also charged the car overnight here.

French Quarter, daytime parade, The Roots of Music Marching Parade.

Bourbon Street

Night time parade on Bourbon Street

Enjoying the night life on Bourbon Street, New Orleans.

This wonderful trolley car brought me from downtown New Orleans up St. Charles and dropped me a few blocks from Whole Foods to retrieve the Tesla.