Have you ever stayed at a Holiday Inn? As a frequent traveler, I have had the opportunity to stay at quite a few of them. They are typically reasonably priced and they are really in almost every location you could ever want to stay at. Of course, when I’m booking my own hotel, my qualifiers are typically clean, safe, and comfy. If it’s pretty, well, then, it’s an added bonus, but generally it’s not my priority.

Holiday Inn has stayed well within my clean, safe, and comfy realm for some time now. I’ve stayed at at least 15 different Holiday Inns in my lifetime, so it’s a name and brand that I trust. In the past year, Holiday Inn has been doing a major brand relaunch, and they reached out to me to see if I was interested in doing a girlfriend getaway “state-cation”. Of course I did! Some time with my girlfriends in my hometown of New Orleans that would qualify as “work”? That, my friends, is what we call a no brainer!

I arrived at the Holiday Inn and immediately noticed that the logo looked completely different. As part of the relaunch, I learned that hotels sporting this spiffy new logo had successfully completed the re-branding process. When I walked into the lobby I was greeted by soft music and a friendly staff member. He walked behind the desk after introducing himself as the manager and I told him I was there to check in. When I mentioned my name, he immediately pulled out an envelope with my name on it and said “Yes, Ms. Lehmann – we’ve been waiting for you!” (Really? Lil’ ole me?)

We were given a room on the 17th floor and when we walked in I turned around and looked at my friend in disbelief. I mean, I know I was there to check out the “rebranding” but um, this was INCREDIBLY nice. Very modern, great colors, upholstered headboard with tons of pillows (heck, I could pick the “type” of pillow I wanted – soft, firm, etc.) and even the artwork on the wall was nice – black and white photographs – not your typical “hotel room” artwork, you know? Très, très cool, et très, très chic!

The first thing I did, because I’m a big kid, was throw my body onto the bed. My friend T just rolled her eyes at me because well, she was not surprised. Then I hopped up and threw open the curtains of the room and, well, hello New Orleans! We had a spectacular view of the city. We were staying on the westbank at the Holiday Inn in Gretna, so we had a view of the Crescent City Connection and the Mississippi River – with the city of New Orleans behind it.

Not too shabby, right?

Naturally, because Murphy’s Law pretty much exists for me, the power went out shortly after we arrived, leaving us in the dark for about an hour. Granted, we live in Southern Louisiana. We have wind, rain, and power that is mostly above ground. Power goes out on a fairly regular basis ’round these parts, so we just giggled about our luck and relaxed in the room until it came back on.

The manager called the room and apologized for the inconvenience, which I thought was really sweet, but naturally no one can help the power going out! The weather started to get rainy and yucky, so after a quick dinner, we curled up in the bed and watched a movie – my favorite – Love Actually. Ok, we fell asleep halfway through it. We are both workin’ mamas! What can I say?!

Don’t laugh, but the best part about a girlfriend getaway? SLEEPING IN!

The next day we did a little work on our computers (yay for WiFi!), and grabbed lunch in the hotel’s restaurant, the Round House Bar & Grill. After I was stuffed with sweet potato fries and a yummy wrap, we decided to make the uber-short 10 minute trip across the bridge into the city to have a little fun. We walked, shopped, checked out the river and had beignets. (Yes, even locals love beignets and chicory coffee!) We had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants Lüke, and then walked over to have drinks at my favorite cocktail spot – loa.

Holiday Inn Round House Bar and Grill

Overall Holiday Inn provided us with an awesome chance to have a fun girlfriend getaway in my home state. So often I forget to be a tourist in my own city, so this was a great opportunity for me to do a little something different (and to SLEEP IN!).

Disclosure: Holiday Inn provided us with a 2-night stay, as well as meal vouchers for the hotel restaurant and gift cards to cover our gas. However, the opinions I expressed are all mine. You know, because that’s how I roll. Feel free to hold me to it.