(no subject)

Lots of comments to answer on the last few posts, I know, and I'll be getting to them shortly. :D But first, I wanted to throw a question out there to you all. For Christmas I'm going to be visiting my brother and his wife in Leesville, Louisiana, where he is currently stationed (he's in the Army). I have a couple extra days after the holiday and we were going to drive down and spend one night in New Orleans. I've been tasked with reserving our hotel. All the B&Bs (that I've looked at) require a 2-night minimum stay, and we're all very strapped for cash anyway, so I'm now looking at places like Super 8 or Motel 6, some kind of cheapish hotel a little ways outside the city center. My sister told me that even those places book up around Christmas (apparently last year, they wanted to visit New Orleans after Christmas like we're doing this year, but gave up when online investigation revealed that there was absolutely nowhere to stay in the whole city), so I need to reserve something.

I'm just curious if any of you have enough experience in or around New Orleans to have any advice for me on places absolutely NOT to stay, parking or getting around, etc. Since our time is so short, basically we're just going to have dinner there, spend the night at a cheap hotel, then wander about the French Quarter a bit and have breakfast before driving out again. We'll have five adults and one child, so we're going to have two cars to deal with, as well.