trolley, backstroke, chargrilled oysters, breast stroke, beignets, sidestroke, cafe au lait, crawl, trolley, backstroke, dive.....rescue

This trip is starting to take a toll on us. We may not be “running” from one thing to another but we are continuously moving. It was near 10 when we woke up this morning so we are off to a really slow start. We headed up to the Trolley Stop Café for breakfast. When we stepped out of the condo, there was a car parked on top of the brick planter. It had been put there by another vehicle that was firmly implanted in the side of the first car. No one was hurt but at least one group of tourists will finish their vacation in a rented car.

There was one police car on the scene but at the Trolley Stop, there were 4 more having breakfast. It must be a popular spot because several more including some officers showed up before we left.

We had a great day yesterday. No rain! We started out by heading over to Café du Monde for beignets and coffee for breakfast. It was pretty quiet there. We actually got there about 11 so they were between rushes. We walked along the shops in the French Market and then we headed over to the Lee Circle and went into the World War II Museum. We had heard this was a “must see” and we weren’t disappointed. We started off with the film, a large screen history of the war. It was very good and was narrated by Tom Hanks. I have been exposed to the history of WWII but have never realized the “real” story. It truly was a “world” war. There weren’t many people in the world that were not affected by it. The casualty counts I have mostly seen were strictly military counts. When you see the total casualty counts including the civilian counts, it is staggering. They listed the total WWII casualty count as 65,000,000 including military and civilian.

When you look at individual events and the civilian casualties, you can understand how this number got so high. You can start off with 11,000,000 killed in concentration camps. We have been exposed to the idea that the Nazis killed 6,000,000 Jews but that was only half of the total number. The atomic bomb at Hiroshima killed 80,000 in an instant and many more over time. Nagasaki was not as high a count but still significant.

The debate still rages over our use of the atomic bomb but this museum had pictures of other Japanese cities that were firebombed before we turned to the Atomic Bomb. Casualty counts in these bombings were often over 100,000 people yet the Japanese lack of defenses and the total destruction of whole cities weren’t enough to force their surrender. 2 atomic bombs made them give up. One plane, one bomb, the total annihilation of an entire city did what hundreds of planes and thousands of tons of bombs could not do.

We finished up there and headed back to the trolley as we realized that it was 4:30 and we had used up most of the day (the lighted portion at least). We headed back to the condo and changed our clothes, took my medicine and headed off to the St. Louis Cathedral for the evening Christmas Concert. Tonight is John Boutte, a well known Jazz Singer (around here at least). He did his Christmas concert with a string quartet and his guitar player. He mixed well known Christmas carols with songs of his own. At one point, he told the audience that these Christmas Carols were much harder than they looked. With Jazz songs, he could “fool around with them” but with Christmas Carols, he had to play them pretty much straight up and for him that was difficult.

He was very good but it took some getting used to on my part to enjoy his singing. As much as I like all kinds of music, this was not something I was very used to and it took about half the show for me to get so I really enjoyed it.

After the show, we wandered about Decatur St looking for something reasonably priced and interesting to eat. We talked to some people in the business of selling tours and some other people we met along the street and decided that we wouldn’t wander up to Bourbon St. tonight. Instead, we headed down to the Riverfront Trolley and decided to head out to Canal Street and see what was going on out there. We waited what seemed like forever at the trolley stop with the cold wind coming off the Mississippi. Finally, the trolley appeared and drove right by us. It was going in the wrong direction but there were only 2 stops left and we were looking for a place out of the wind. NOT HAPPY!

A few minutes later, he did return and stop for us. We rode out to Canal and then walked across the street to Harrah’s Casino. We walked around for a while watching the gamblers playing but the games were too steep for us ($10 and $15 minimums). John Besh has a restaurant in the casino but the prices started in the high $30 range with most meals in the 40s and 50s so we passed. We spied a Starbucks in the corner and when we got there discovered that there was a Fuddruckers right next door. This Fuddruckers was not up to the quality of any of the others that we have been to. I had the half pound burger but it was pressed so thin that it was dry. I have never had a Fuddruckers burger that was dry (until now). That was pretty much the end of the day. We took the trolley back to the condo and that as they say was that.

Well, now we have had breakfast and will head out to finish our walking tour of the Garden District. Tonight, the Christmas concert is the Ebenezer Baptist Choir so we can expect some lively celebration of the holiday. They do not seem to have these shows on the weekend so this is the last one we will be able to see. I will miss them. They have been a lot of fun.

The finish of the Garden District walking tour was a lot of fun except for the rain. It started raining as we left the condo. We finished the tour and saw a lot of magnificent houses. One of them was the “Sinclair” house that we saw on the Christmas Tour. Another was Ann Rice’s house (former). She sold her holdings in New Orleans when she moved to Southern California after her husband’s (Stan) death several years ago. We saw another house she owned earlier in the week. That house had been bought by Nicholas Cage. We heard afterwards that he had sold it and bought another in another section of town. Included in our tour was the house where Archie Manning lives and raised Payton and Ely. We also saw a house that the tour book says is owned by John Goodman. It is a large beautiful house compared to the Mannings which is nice but not mansion quality.

The tour ended at Commander’s Palace where we planned to have lunch. That didn’t work out. They told us that they had no openings anytime today. Not a huge disappointment. It is a famous place here in the Garden District but we figured that with the economy and the fact that it was 2 pm on Thursday, we shouldn’t have a chance. The upside was that this gave us the chance to return to the Acme Oyster House to grab another one of those chargrilled oyster plates.

First though we crossed the street from Commander’s Palace and ventured into a cemetery. Cemeteries here are very different from anything we are used to. The graves are above ground. The claim has been made that this is due to the high ground water in New Orleans (the city proper is below sea level after all). We met a man who works in the cemetery. He was there to coordinate activities for a funeral and was waiting for the flower car while he spoke to us. We noticed that the vaults were not very big and that there were, in some cases, a dozen names listed on them. My first question was how do you get all those people in there?

He gave us some history of the cemeteries in New Orleans and said that the idea that they were above ground due to the ground water was wrong. Yes, there is high ground water and this does cause problems with caskets being pushed up to the surface but the water is not the reason that everyone is buried above ground. Actually, they aren’t. Many of the graves are only raised a foot or two and have a dirt or loose stone surface. He told us that the cemeteries in New Orleans were “French Style” Cemeteries with the vaults above ground.

He kept looking for the flower car and finally took us several rows deeper into the cemetery and showed us a vault that he was working on. Each of these raised vaults has 2 sections. After a year or more, they open the oldest vault section and place any remaining bones in a bag which they push back into a rear corner of the vault. They then clean out the vault to prepare for another casket. They only use wooden caskets and no one is embalmed so everything rots pretty quickly. He told us that much of the casket and body are decomposed after a year or two. They keep any bones that haven’t decomposed in bags in the rear and use the vault again.

This came as quite a surprise to us. We had never heard of any such thing. It was interesting and after a while, we returned to the main road into the cemetery to find that the flower car was already there and unloaded. They keep detailed records of who is buried in each vault. Not everyone puts markers on the vault so several more people can be buried there than the markers on the vault list. (Tell me that isn’t interesting!)

Lunch at the Acme Oyster House consisted of another plate of those delicious charbroiled oysters and a glass of wine. We saw our waiter from the first visit and he came over and talked to us for a bit before running off to wait on other customers. We looked around and decided that the charbroiled oysters must be one of their most popular dishes. About ¾ of the tables had a platter of them.

After lunch, we did some shopping around Decatur Street. Some of it was shopping and the rest was ducking raindrops. After wandering through several stores, we realized that it was nearing 5 pm. There wasn’t time to return to our room and get back in time for the Christmas program so we decided after much deliberation (yeah right) to head over to Café du Monde for coffee. As we ordered coffee, we also ordered beignets (was there ever any doubt?). Following coffee, we headed over to the church for the concert. The rain had gotten a lot worse but we arrived there reasonably dry after taking as many sidewalks with overhanging balconies as possible.

The concert was by the Ebenezer Baptist Church. The problem was that the combination of rain and heavy traffic kept many of the participants from getting there on time. They had a 5 piece band but started with only drums. One of singers led the choir but at the time they stated there were only 8 members present. During the hour, an organist, a keyboard player, the real leader and a few more singers showed up. At first, they sang acapella (I am assuming different songs than they had programmed. As they added members, the songs got livelier. The concert turned out to be pretty good but wondered what it would have been like if they had all been there.

We wandered up to Preservation Hall to see what was going on there but found it closed. 2 nights we found them to be closed due to the weather. This was not the only place either. We ran across several places that just didn’t open. Probably a good move because the weather really beat down the crowds in the “Quarter”. The “hawkers” who try to drag customers into various establishments had few people on which to concentrate. One of the early nights we were there, the crowds came out in spite of the weather but as the week went on, they got fewer and fewer.

Time is running down. We have only one day left. We are happy with what we have done here but we did skip a bunch of things due to the weather. We had wanted to take in one of the swamp tours and drive down to the gulf but that just gives us a reason to return.

Friday Morning!! Our last day in New Orleans! This will be pretty much a lost day. We have done a lot of shopping but little buying. We have a very short list of things we want to pick up but this is the day we set aside to do it. We grabbed the trolley and headed into the quarter. We decided to take all three trolleys (St. Charles Street, Canal Street and Waterfront) and go directly to the French Market. We got off at the Market stop and found ourselves right across the street from Central Market so our decision was made: muffuleta for breakfast. It was around 11 and it was amazing how busy the market was. This time we took time to look around after we ate.

We didn’t see anyone buy anything but muffuletas either time we were there but upon looking around saw that it was a rather interesting definitely Italian market. It would be nice to have access to a market like that here especially with all of the ethnic and regional products that they stocked (not to mention the muffuletas). They even had the red tins of amaretto cookies so famous on holidays in Italian homes (they even had large bags of the cookies to refill the tins).

They have their area where they make the sandwiches but it has high walls around it so you can’t see in. There are also signs forbidding anyone from trying to photograph the area where they make the sandwiches. When you dismantle the sandwich, you wonder what all the secrecy is about.

We left the Central Market and wandered through the market and many of the shops around it. We bought some stuff and decided not to buy other stuff that we intended to get, like beignet mix and Café du Monde coffee and pralines. It just seemed that it would not be the same drinking chicory coffee in Maine.

We ended our stay with one last visit to Café du Monde. This time, we only split an order of beignets as we were still full from the muffuleta but needed one more fix. They brought us our very strong coffees and a plate that looked like Sunday River after 2 feet of new powder. I am sure all of my doctors will be glad when I leave this place.

We took the trolley back to the condo and dropped off our goodies then got back on and headed deeper into the district. We went to the coffee shop near Anne Rice’s (former) house and bought a couple of gifts there. We also had one last cup of coffee there also. There is one table that sits in a bay window. We had joked on our previous visit that this table was the primo table in the place. You sat right out by the sidewalk but were protected from the weather. It was empty so we grabbed it and slowly sipped (yet) another cup of coffee watching the world outside.

We returned to the condo and started to pack everything up in preparation for the trip home. The weather was a big question mark. There was a large snowstorm working its way up the east coast. It was expected to drop a lot of snow in the Carolinas, Virginias and DC. It looked like it might be gone by the time we hit the area. It seemed like we should not have as much stuff as we had when we came but of course that didn’t work out.

We got up at 3:30 and dragged everything out to the elevator. We called to have our car brought around and then packed it (in the rain of course) and headed out. Cheryl set up the computer and it guided us out of town flawlessly and we began our trip home. We planned to stop in Washington DC to visit Ivy and Andrew and, of course, Madeline but as we travelled towards the east coast, the weather reports and travel reports got worse and worse. As we got closer, I called Ivy and she said they had 10 to 12 inches already and were expecting more than 20. They were telling everyone to stay at home as they couldn’t keep the roads clear.

We decided to postpone our visit until January and as it worked out, that was a good plan. We got hung up in Virginia and lost 7 ½ hours sitting on the interstate while they removed abandoned cars from the road and plowed it. By late afternoon on Sunday (the day we were supposed to visit) we hadn’t even gotten to the road we would have taken to get to DC. We should have arrived in good old SB in the mid evening and finally arrived at 2:30 am which pretty much ruined us for the next day.

The trip was fun in spite of the weather both there and on the return. We enjoyed the food and the people we met. The French Quarter is pretty much like any other tourist trap we have been to except it is more decadent than anywhere else. People wander the streets with drinks in hand. The area is noted for its music but frankly some of the best music we heard was on street corners (with the exception of the lady with the squeeze box who either couldn’t sing or sang in a traditional style that I was not familiar with. The food was great and we met many wonderful people. The Christmas House Tour was marvelous and our walking tour through the Garden District was fun in spite of the rain. Seeing the area where Anne Rice lived and wrote all of those marvelous books was a thrill. Talking to some of the locals who knew her and liked to talk about her eccentricities was fun. Picturing her driving around NO in a hearse and showing up at her book signings riding in a coffin in that hearse was certainly information that I never had before. Seeing some of the buildings that were characters in her stories. Seeing the Manning house where Archie Manning raised his family including Payton and Eli (Colts and Giants respectively).

We didn’t get into the 9th Ward or any of the places that still show the marks of Katrina but due to the weather, we never took the car anywhere and these places were not on the trolley lines. The Charles Ave Trolley has only recently been back to full use. While we took the Canal Street Trolley to both ends, we never did take our local trolley to the end. We wanted to but just never got around to it.

Well, we are home now. I got 2 new books on Alaska in anticipation of next summer’s great adventure (camping in Alaska and the Yukon and the definitive book on sport fishing in Alaska). Hopefully, that will happen but the one thing I have learned in the past is to take things as they come. Maybe we will, maybe we will go somewhere else. For the meantime, I have a shed to finish and friends to visit and cook for. We are looking forward to a few months of peace and quiet at home with the only excitement being turkey suppers. BYE for now!!!!

clayton

into each rainstorm some really good food must fall

Hi again! Another day, more bad weather forecasts. The fog is back this morning. Some of the ferries have been docked and the roads are full of cars crawling with little visibility. It is expected to get worse as the rain will return this afternoon with torrential downpours again tomorrow. This is starting to screw up our plans. We planned to head over to the French Quarter today with a 3 day trolley pass but if the rain is supposed to be as bad as the forecast, we probably won’t go tomorrow. I guess we could buy a one day pass and then see what happens the rest of the week.

There is supposed to be a great D-day museum down the street that we could do tomorrow if we don’t leave the district but time will tell. Breakfast will be first and we will decide as we eat.

The news here is interesting. It is pretty much all weather related and Saints related. The sports report here was nearly 10 minutes long and involved nothing but the Saints. Highlights, interviews and commentary. They are really excited about the Saints but if you look back over their history it is pretty much like being in New England before we got our first Superbowl….Yawn. They don’t even mention any other sports here, just football.

Of course, the tour books were wrong. There is now a 5 day trolley pass as well as a 3 day pass. The one day pass still exists but you have to buy that one on the trolley. I took the planning out of the equation by buying the 5 day pass. Now we can use it whenever we want even if we just want to wander off for coffee.

Early morning and we are off to the French Quarter. It is fun to wander around when the only people there are cleaning and prepping for the new day. The rain held off for quite a while. We took the trolley over to Canal Street (there are 3 trolley lines; St Charles Ave, Canal Street and Riverfront). The turnaround for the Charles Ave Trolley is right across Canal Street from Bourbon Street. We walked down Bourbon and found a couple of places open offering bargain breakfasts. There were also a few bars open but they were pretty much empty. We zigzagged through the quarter and ended up down by the Mississippi at Café du Monde. This is a must visit place in the quarter and home of the beignets and strong New Orleans coffee with chicory. Both the coffee and the beignets lived up to expectations. The beignet is a French doughnut. It is rectangular and fried bit of pastry, 3 to a dish and positively smothered in powdered sugar.

It is said you can tell everyone who has been to Café du Monde by the powdered sugar residue on their clothing. I was more the rule than the exception. They were delicious and I look forward to future visits while we are here. During our visit, some musicians started to arrive on the sidewalk (right next to our table). They played a mixture of jazz and gospel music and were quite good. It was funny because the first 2 to arrive were the singer/trumpet player and the trombone. After they started playing a guitar showed up and just worked in followed shortly by a base drum/cymbal. Later on a large horn (bigger than a French horn and smaller than a tuba) came and worked in. The singer had a couple of CDs that he hawked between songs. They were quite good and the donations backed that up.

While we were allowing Mother Nature to wash the sugar off our sweat shirts, we wandered through the shops along the street and into the French Market. The shops were interesting (in one they were making pralines, the broken pieces provided as samples were delicious) and had the usual line of souvenirs although they were New Orleans things). Cookbooks are big here because this is really a center for food. There is a much larger local cuisine difference here than just about anywhere I have been.

We were trying to figure out which part of the quarter to hit next when the skies opened up. We sought refuge in the Cathedral of St. Louis. We had planned to go there in the evening for a Christmas concert but this gave us a chance to look it over without the crowds. It is billed as the oldest continuously operating Catholic Church in the country. It doesn’t look it. It looks brand new and shiny and bright. It must have been through a recent major renovation as it was beautiful. When the weather cleared up a bit, we wandered into the heart of the quarter and found the Gumbo Shop where we had lunch.

The gumbo was dark brown, thick and really flavorful. I had the crab and shrimp and Cheryl had the andouie and chicken. Check another food off the list of New Orleans favorites. We checked out a bunch of shops. Saints fever has run rampant down here. Just about every store sells Saint’s souvenirs and every marquis says GO SAINTS. It brings back memories of our first Super Bowl. These people love their team (and have never had much else to cheer for since the Battle of New Orleans…and I’m not even sure about that).

It started to rain harder and we figured that if we were going to head to the Quarter that evening, we should head back to the condo for a bit of a rest. We are still figuring out the trolleys. We had a couple of hours rest and a nap and just before 5 we headed back to the quarter for the concert. The trolley ride was fine until we got to Canal St. At that point, we saw police cars with their lights going across the trolley tracks down the street (in the direction we needed to go of course). We waited for about 10 minutes and nothing changed so we headed down a side street.

We arrived at the Cathedral and heard the choir singing. I thought they must have moved up the concert or something but we went in and found some seats. It seems that they were just doing a sound check and we were a half hour early. Eventually the concert started. The boys were wonderful. They sang a mixture of songs with some religious songs and the rest Christmas songs. They also have a really big organ in the church. There were 3 songs that were played on that organ. Now, these songs were meant to showcase the organ and the player so they were technically difficult and not particularly melodious. There was a little girl in the row ahead of us that was totally bored every time the organ played.

When the show ended, we left the church into a torrential downpour. One woman trying to hurry through the rain, fell over the 2 steps leading down from the church to the courtyard. These steps are small but they are there and if you don’t realize they are there you can take a pretty bad tumble. Another person fell right after her in the same place.

We scurried up the street and worked our way back to Bourbon St. The rain picked up force as we moved and by the time we got to Bourbon, you could hardly see where you were going. We had thought about going to the Preservation Hall for some Jazz but they closed (I assume because of the weather as they had a band scheduled). We watched some really bad Karaoke at the Cat’s Meow, ducked into a jazz club that hadn’t started to avoid drowning and finally found refuge in a pizza parlor. The pizza was exceptional (sorry La Festa) but the dry place was much more important. After a while, the rain lightened up (just a little) and we made a dash for the trolley. Of course, the trolley wasn’t near and we hid in the entry way to a Lady Footlocker. Eventually, the trolley showed.

Meanwhile, we met a young (compared to us) woman who was here on vacation. We talked to her and had a great time (while freezing because we were soaked). We compared notes on where we had been and were we each thought the best places were. She was from Austin, TX so we talked about that too. We enjoyed Austin a lot when we were there. As it worked out, she was staying in the same condo we were, on the same floor just 2 rooms down. Small world?

We dried out, had a drink and settled in for a quiet night. We opened the curtains and watched Mother Nature’s fireworks show. The lightening was wild and went on all night (we didn’t watch it all night). The thunder woke us a couple of times but we slept well. This morning, we wandered down to the next block and had breakfast at the Trolley Stop Café before heading back into the city. The rain continued to be heavy but we didn’t want to give in. We decided to go to the IMAX Theater and see what was playing. The trolleys worked out well and we didn’t have to stand around in the rain….at least until the end. When we arrived at the end of Canal st., the rain was really heavy. We got off and headed quickly to the IMAX Theater. They had 4 films rotating throughout the day. They were all educational type films (one of which we had already seen) and they wanted $24 each to get in (for a 45 minute film?). I think their concentration was to get you to buy combination tickets where the more events you buy, the cheaper each item was (the IMAX film was $24 but if you bought a zoo ticket, an Insectariums ticket and an aquarium ticket, the combined cost was only $32 each.

We left and headed across the street to Riverwalk, a mall along the Mississippi River. By the time we got in the door, we were totally soaked, even worse than the night before. We wandered around the mall for a couple of hours until the rain let up. We had coffee and watched the traffic on the river; barges, ships, tugs and ferries.

We then headed back out and caught the trolley along the riverfront. We got off down at the French Market and headed for the Central Grocery, famed for the muffuleta sandwich another of the foods on the New Orleans list. The sandwich is huge, made on a loaf of bread shaped like an extremely large hamburger roll a good 10 inches or more across. There is little choice (other than take it or leave it). You can buy a whole sandwich or a half sandwich and if you buy the whole one, you can have it cut in half or quarters. None-the-less it has an olive salad complete with pickled cauliflower, carrots and other veggies along with the resolute, salami, mortadella and cheese. We bought a whole cut into quarters and commenced to demolish the entire sandwich. We wandered around Decatur St and caught the Canal Street trolley. We rode the trolley all the way to the other end. We wanted to see more of the city. It was a nice ride but there was nothing special until the end when we were surrounded by cemeteries.

New Orleans has pretty unique cemeteries. All of the graves are above ground. Some people are buried in mausoleums and others are buried in graves that are built up from the ground.

Once back at the condo, we rested (I took a nap again) and when I woke, we were late starting out for the evening’s Christmas Concert. We got there in time. The concert tonight was by the Franklin Street Baptist Church. They brought a Men’s Chorus of 35 members and a mass chorus of 40 members along with a 4 piece band (drums, guitar, bass and keyboards). The men’s chorus was on first. They had an amazingly strong voice and sang 2 songs. Then it appeared that they went off the program as the director went over to the band and talked to them before returning and moving people around. He scavenged microphones from the group that was set up to capture the singing and handed them to individuals. I am sure he had the sound guy scurrying as it took a while for the hand helds to come up loud enough for individuals. They sang 2 songs in this configuration that were his own arrangements as they included pieces from several Christmas and religious songs intricately woven together to be outstanding. Their last song brought tears to your eyes it was so good. They got a standing ovation even before the song was over.

The massed choir had a tough job to overcome the men’s choir but they did. Their last song was the kind of song that you think of when you think of this kind of music. The chorus sang the song and a soloist belted out main and counter melodies in the vein of Aretha Franklin. This entire show was spectacular and moving. The audience was on their feet clapping along with the music and you could feel that great stone basilica moving to the beat. They finished the evening with both choirs singing and including the audience in the song. The woman announcing sang the solo with it and the audience sang with enthusiasm. With more than 60 people in the combined choir, the sound was big and strong…maybe even too big. It was a great evening and very different from the boy’s choir of the night before with their 21 much smaller voices.

I did wonder at one point, how big a church congregation do you have to have to have 2 choirs of such size. There were also many people from the Franklin Street Baptist Church in the audience. How big???

Afterwards, we wandered the quarter. We checked out several clubs with music and settled on a club with a blues band playing. We went in and paid $19 for 2 drinks (always higher when a band is playing) only to have the band pick up their stuff as soon as our drinks were delivered. It was still early and this band was a warm up of sorts, probably playing only for tips just to get seen. I though they were pretty good but didn’t hear too much by them.

The waitress said the main band would be setting up and starting to play early because the first band left early. There were only 3 people in the audience and that included Cheryl and I.

As soon as the band started to set up, people started to wander in and by the time they started playing, there were about 25 people there. With the weather and the fact that the quarter doesn’t get rolling too early, that wasn’t bad.

This band was a blues band too. They were good but people joined in and played a couple of songs and rotated out. There were always 4 or 5 people on stage but they varied as time went on. I have never seen that before. Interesting.

We left after a while and sought out something to eat. We settled on the Acme Oyster House. This was a busy place when most of the restaurants in the quarter were empty. Earlier, we passed by the place, there was a line out on the sidewalk waiting to get in. This was the only line at a restaurant we saw the whole time we were here (so far). I had red about the place in my tour book. It is reputed to have good food at a reasonable price.

We were taken into a back room and placed at a long table. There were several of these long tables with 2 or 3 groups at each table kind of like Durgin Park in Boston. We looked at the food in the room and perused the menu deciding to split a plate of char grilled oysters and split a crawfish po boy. In memory of my year in Norfolk VA, I ordered a single oyster shooter (a shot glass with a raw oyster filled with vodka and hot sauce. I always said I was a social raw oyster eater and would only eat them when the people around me decided to order them in a group. I have had them a few times lately on my own but I wanted to try this. It was quite good. I have even gotten so I can chew them a couple of times. Cheryl watched saying that to her raw oysters are a spectator sport.

The char grilled oysters were great. I watched Paula Deen make these at her brother’s (Bubba) restaurant and have always wanted to try them. Definitely worth waiting for. They put the oyster on a half shell directly on the bbq grill. They cover it with butter and wait for the butter to get bubbly before they add grated Romano cheese and let that get bubbly as well. They serve it with rounds of French bread to soak up the butter.

As we were winding down from that treat, they brought us our po boy. They even cut it in half and served it on separate plates. They fried crawfish tails just covered the entire plate. There was no way you could get them all in the sandwich so once you finished the sandwich, you had a half plate of tails to eat by their lonesomes. Best meal we have had since we got here.

We walked out of the quarter and caught our trolley back to the condo. We had a real cowboy driving this one. He was fast and really whipped around the corners. We were back in no-time.

I got up this morning and there was no rain falling. Imagine that? New Orleans without rain…unheard of.

Well, I guess I will close and upload this. Then I think we will hop on the trolley and head for Café du Monde for some more beignets. Can’t stay away from them. We really had to force ourselves to find a real restaurant last night because it was really tempting to just grab a plate of the little French treats (especially since Café du Monde is right across the park from St. Louis Cathedral). My patience has now run out and beignets are definitely on the horizon.

I am truly sorry about this continued talk about the wonderful food here but that is one of the things that New Orleans is all about. Food that is totally different from anywhere else we have been. I wish we could send all of you a plate of beignets and a cup of the strong chicory coffee or a plate of those marvelous grilles oysters. But alas, it is like watching Emeril on TV when he says he wishes you could all have smellavision so you could at least smell what he is cookin’. It Ain’t gonna happen. Bon Appetite!

Well, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles and they ran through the bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go!

Well, here we are again; hurtling southwest on the interstate system. We are taking a short sojourn to New Orleans. We have a timeshare that doesn’t get a lot of attention since we bought the motorhome. We are not willing to give it up as we won’t always have the motorhome.

We were notified by RCI that we were approaching the limit we could bank one of our weeks so we figured that we should take a short trip and use up the delinquent week. After some consideration, we decided to go to New Orleans. We were going there following our visit to Texas but Hurricane Gustav had other ideas and arrived on the day we were scheduled to get there so we missed out.

Cheryl Needs 3 states to complete her sweep of the US. Louisiana is one of those 3 states. In fact it is kind of out there all by itself so this seemed to be a good destination. There were not a lot of available spaces but we found one in the Garden District; a small studio apartment so we grabbed it and started planning.
Since we have plenty of time and wanted to stop in DC to visit Ivy, Andrew and Madeline, it seemed to be a slam-dunk to drive. So now, here we are 600 miles away from home headed down I-81. We are presently in Virginia and plan to stay in Tennessee tonight. That will put us somewhere near ¾ of the way there. We can’t check in until 4 PM so we have plenty of time.

We were up at 3 and out of the driveway at 4. The world is a quiet place that time of the morning. Traffic started to pick up on 495 and really got thick as we approached Hartford. I decided, at that point to take the route through New Haven and over the George Washington Bridge (recommended by the nav system). The traffic was decent until we reached New Haven and started along 95. We encountered a couple of slowdowns and then came upon a northbound accident that closed the entire northbound side of the highway and brought the southbound side to a gawking standstill. We lost at least a half hour there and another half hour in the slowdowns.

With the large amount of truck traffic, we decided to take the lower level of the GW. Again a mistake, the traffic there was pretty insane with cars weaving in and out and a SUV broken down in one of the 3 lanes. The truck traffic on the upper level is much more disciplined and easier to deal with.

After crossing the Hudson we headed towards the Jersey Turnpike. We stopped at the first Plaza for gas and a bite to eat. The Jersey Plazas are among the better turnpike areas to get gas. Connecticut and New York have greatly inflated gas prices while Jersey is much cheaper. I always fill up at home where I better control what I buy and then hold on for Jersey where the prices are reasonable. The breakfast food available is another story but then road food is often a “take what is available” event.

We hit the road again, passed through the EZPASS lane at 50 mph (why do we have to slow down to 10 mph at home?). I hadn’t studied the route very carefully on the computer before we left so I was surprised when the computer told us to exit after just a couple of exits: the adventure was underway!

We followed 78 over to 81 and headed south on 81. I had 2 choices at the start. I could go the way I went or I could have gone across 84 and found 81 near Scranton, PA and headed south. The Nav system chose the GW bridge as the best route and I am sure it was the shortest but definitely not the quickest. Usually, I take the Scranton Route but that is definitely better with the motorhome. With just the car, I thought it would be fun to take the route we did (and the traffic building up to b e heavy going into Hartford helped me make the decision (and it was still wrong)).

Well, eventually we cleared the busy roads and settled in to some serious driving. We watched the price of gas drop as we went further south. Each tank has been cheaper than the tank before it. We just entered Alabama and saw a gas station advertising $2.31.

The distance to New Orleans is just under 1,600 miles. I set a goal of 900 miles in the first day and we stopped at 797. We stopped at a Super 8 around 7 Pm. Decent place considering all we wanted was a place to sleep and take a shower. 2 double beds that weren’t all that comfortable but I never sleep well on the first night anywhere so it was pretty good. One of the Public TV stations ran a nice piece on Peter, Paul and Mary that was entertaining and eventually put me to sleep.
4 AM and back on the road again. We drove through Chattanooga (didn’t see the choo choo) and were soon (nothing on this trip has been soon) crossed into Georgia briefly before entering Alabama. We are presently sitting at 1176 miles down and 415 to go. We stopped at the Alabama Visitor Center and met a gentleman with a very thick accent who took great pleasure in telling us about his visit to Maine.
He worked for a company that used potato products from a company in Presque Isle and went to visit the factory. When he spoke a sentence, you had to hesitate for a bit and let what he said develop in your mind before you understood it. It’s a good thing he talked slowly.

We should hit Birmingham in an hour and a half then another hour and a half to the Mississippi border. More later. Hey, it’s later! As things go, we did 900 miles yesterday so we could have an easier day today and get here before it was too late. As hard as the 900 miles were yesterday, the 680 miles today went off like a charm. Like yesterday, we left at 4 am. The difference was that we had to kill time as we were too much ahead of schedule.

As near as I can figure, the miles in the Northeast with all the traffic and the lower speed limits made the driving difficult. Today, we had almost no traffic and the speed limits were 70. It was a little more difficult as it started raining in the late morning and poured most of the time. The entry into New Orleans was so rainy that you could hardly see the road ahead. We took I 10 across Lake Ponchatrain. The high point of the bridge was in the clouds and you couldn’t see more than 300 yards into the lake.

We did get into the city with little trouble even though the computer seemed to be sending us on a wild goose chase in a circle over the roads we needed. In retrospect, it was just dealing with the plethora of one way streets and we did end up at the right place (even though the name on the building was different than the name on all our paperwork?) They explained that the resort was the right name but it is owned by Wyndham hotels who wanted their name on the marquis. It worked out although we had to unload the car in a downpour. We didn’t take long but we were soaked by the time we finished. We were better off than the people who came later. They couldn’t park close and there were more of them so they ended up getting really wet.

We got everything up to the room and got somewhat settled. The room is nice. It is called a studio which means a one room apartment. The literature said that we would have a queen sized bed with a mini kitchen with a toaster oven, a microwave and a mini fridge. As it turned out, we got a king sized bed, a 2 burner stove, a small apartment sized fridge and a microwave looking oven which has way too many buttons and a metal shelf. I will figure that out later.

We headed out to find something to eat. We were directed to a place called Igor’s. It is billed as a bar, grill, pool room and Laundromat. We sat in the bar; we could see the pool tables and didn’t go looking for the Laundromat. We had our first Hurricane, one of the signature drinks of New Orleans (a fruity concoction). It was pretty good but I am glad that is out of the way and I can get on with trying other things out. We met a bunch of people in the bar. They were all curious where we came from and we had fun eating the chicken nuggets (not traditional NO food) and drinking our hurricanes.

Afterwards, we decided to take a walk down the street. We got as far as the corner of our building and stopped watching the people trying to get across the street. It seems that the street beside our hotel had 6 inches of water in it. We decided that tomorrow would be early enough to explore. We did find a store that had food and alcohol but the prices were outrageous so we returned in vain. Time to just relax and get over our 1600 mile drive. I think the Celtics are playing on TBS tonight but after an extensive effort, it seems that we don’t have TBS on our TV. There wasn’t much on and we were really tired so we went to bed at 8:30 hoping for a better day in the morning.

Well, it’s morning. It isn’t raining but the news is full of the aftermath of yesterday’s storm. There were areas of the city that got more than 5 inches of rain yesterday. New Orleans is largely below sea level. The levees that failed during Katrina have been rebuilt and are much stronger. The city is kept dry by a lot of pumps that pump the water out of the city. One pump failed and a gate was opened to relieve the pressure (I am not sure how that all works). The gate eventually failed and they could not close it when the rain let up. They ended up closing up the space with large metal plates. It sounds pretty bad but they seem to take it in stride down here.

The weather is cloudy and foggy. They keep telling us it is warm and humid. The temp is in the 60s but it is really humid making it a little uncomfortable. I’ll take it; it’s better than 30 deg and windy any day. We had a quick breakfast here (toast and egg salad) and coffee. We bought a pound of coffee and had it ground specifically for this trip. We left it in a bag of Christmas presents.

Fortunately, there was enough coffee here in the room for a couple of mornings.
We decided to do the walking tour of the Garden District that was in our tour book. We headed out and walked a block in the wrong direction before we realized it. We turned around and headed for our first stop. This is the area where Ann Rice lived and made famous with her books. I have read all of Ann’s books and look forward to spending some time in the same places that she has made famous in her books.

She has since moved to Southern California following the death of her Husband Stan. The walking tour that we have is heavy on references to places she lived, owned and hung out so it will be fun to check them out. Our first stop is the Garden District Book Shop and the adjacent Coffee Shop. It was a nice walk and we settled into the coffee shop like we owned it. We felt immediately at home. The proprietor was really friendly and we talked for some time before we got our coffee and scones and settled in with the other customers. The place fit like a kid glove.

Afterwards, we moved up into the main part of the building where there were several shops including the book store which was the only place open. This was the book shop where Ann Rice held her first signings for each of her published books (actually it was just around the corner from her house). They had all of her books in stock including signed copies. Her latest book was there as well a book of her memoirs that I did not even know existed.

Freshened by coffee, food, a book store and a couple of Ann Rice locations, we headed down the street. The houses here are magnificent. There are many large houses in the style that we northerners identify as plantation style homes. We found one house that looked like a house but was listed as a church (former). It started out as a Catholic church and then became another denomination. It figured into one of Ann’s books and is now owned by Nicholas Cage. There was also a huge mansion that had a “corn” fence around it. It was wrought iron and shaped like stalks of corn.

As we were walking down the street, we came across a herd of “Red Hats”. We talked to them a bit and one of them asked if we were interested in the PRCA Christmas House Tour. They had 2 tickets that they had bought early for 2 people who ultimately could not attend. It was a good opportunity and the tickets were deeply discounted so we bought them and headed off to the closest house. These are houses that people live in. They are decorated for Christmas and open their doors for tours to make money for charity.

The first house we came to was not on the tour but is owned by the Ladies Opera Guild who maintain it as a tourist attraction. It is a beautiful house and is rarely open to the public. It was open free today so we started there. These buildings were exceptionally beautiful while obviously lived in. Some had visible children’s play rooms and kitchens with “stuff” visible in the glass doored cabinets and desk areas. One house owned by the Sinclair’s was certainly the equal of some of the Newport Mansions. It had recently been “down to the studs” renovated. It is incomprehensable how much money must have been spent on this house. It was the star of the show and had the biggest line.

Since we had started late and began in the middle, we decided to skip house # 6. This house was quite a ways out of the way and in the opposite direction so we skipped one. There were 8 total with the addition of the opera ladies house, we visited 8 houses….OK, 2 of the houses were one house (?). They were originally 2 neighboring houses that were bought by a single person who built a beautiful huge kitchen between the buildings joining the houses and making a single dwelling. It was a unique building but did reduce the advertised number of houses to 7 actual (no complaints, just interesting).

We then crawled over to Buster’s Soul Food Restaurant and split a Hot Shrimp Salad and an Oyster Po Boy. The salad was good but the Po Boy was delicious. The oysters were well fried and nice and crispy. I threw a little hot sauce over the oysters before adding the pickle, tomato and lettuce. MMMMMMM

It was a busy morning (and early afternoon) so we decided to leave the very loud Saint’s fans to their game (and drinks) and return to the condo for a nap. Cheryl worked on some things and I took a rather long nap. I am still suffering from the drive. Tonight, we took a nice walk along St. Charles Avenue in the other direction. We checked out the restaurants, clubs and bars. We stopped at Lucky’s for a drink and discovered that it was owned by the person that owns Igor’s where we ate and drank last night.

This time, we had the Bloody Marys. They were tasty and moderately hot. The garnish was pickled green beans. The drinks were really good but the menu was the same (exactly) as last night so we finished our drinks and continued our journey. We passed some really nice places which we weren’t in the mood for and some lesser places that just didn’t float our boat. We did see a Burger King (I did not drive 1600 miles to eat in the same places we have at home) and eventually a KFC (same note). Then we found Voodoo BBQ (voted best BBQ in NO). While it was good, I would not consider it the best of anything. It was pretty good but the meat was a little skimpy and the roll was not as fresh as it could have been. Such is the curse of the cook. It is hard to buy things that I make myself without critizing them (mine is better).

Now we are back in the condo and thinking that it may be getting close to bedtime. The weather for tomorrow is not good. They are talking about rain tomorrow and another siege of flooding rains through Tuesday. I guess we will just have to wait until tomorrow to figure out what we are going to do. I think I will upload this. Hope you are all doing well.

Merry Christmas.