After Girlfriend Weekend, we scheduled 1 day to recover and then planned to drive to New Orleans for a 3-day visit. (Neither my traveling friend or I had ever been there so this was a great opportunity.)
Well, first off, the idea of "recovery" was a joke. It takes more than 1 day to recover from a weekend like that, and then we decided to go with our hosts (also good friends) to see 2 movies. Why not? But the real highlight came after the movies when we drove to the drive-up window of the take-out daiquiri place. We just drove up to the window and ordered from a huge menu (hey, you can even order daiquaris by the gallon!). They handed back the frozen drinks in unmarked styrofoam cups with a piece of tape over each lid so that technically they are closed containers. Then we put the straws in the drinks and drove off, drinking all the way home for the 1-hour drive. And those drinks weren't watered down, either. What a hoot! Definitely an only-in-Texas moment.
Anyway, we hit New Orleans just at the beginning of Mardi Gras season. (Silly me, I always thought it was just a 2 or 3-day celebration, but noooooo, it is an entire 9-week season. Which follows directly on the heels of the 4 to 5-week Christmas season. I don't know how they survive.) We actually got to see one parade, which was unexpected.
So what did we do? Day 1 we slept late then ate a fabulous lunch at the Commanders Palace (incredible food, amazing service, and 25-cent martinis -- how can you go wrong with that?), then wandered across the street to the Lafayette cemetery and ended up joining a walking tour of the cemetery and the Garden district to a bunch of houses that have ghosts. The guide explained a lot about how the tombs function, told us great stories about the houses, and provided a lot of historical info. It was great! By the end, we were so tired that we could not bring ourselves to stay up and do the town. (Well, in our defense, we still had not fully recovered from the weekend!)
Day 2 we got up early and tried to get on a bus tour of the city but it was scheduled for the afternoon so instead we went to a warehouse where they make the parade floats for most of the krewes (those are social clubs that put on the mardi gras parades -- each krewe has it's separate parade, which is why there are parades every couple of days during the season). Being able to get up close and personal to the parade floats was amazing. Everything is really huge -- something you don't realize when you're standing far away watching. Then we had a wonderful lunch in a hotel overlooking the Mississippi River (every time I see the word Mississippi I think of jump rope rhymes when I was a kid). The afternoon city tour by Greyline was really good -- it was very comprehensive. Yes, we saw some Katrina devastated neighbornoods (lots of blocks with 4 or 5 refurbished houses, 2 or 3 houses that still haven't been fixed up, and lots of empty lots), but we didn't go into the worst sections (that was another tour and we really didn't want to look at storm victims like they were in the zoo). We had dinner an another notable restaurant, Irene's, but were definitely disappointed -- the food was just ho hum.
By the time evening came, we were ready to tackle Bourbon Street. Our B&B was located right at the beginning (or end, I don't know which) of Bourbon Street, so we ended up walking the entire length up and back. And what an experience. The cacaphony of music blaring out the doors of clubs, and barkers trying to get you to come into the clubs and the girlie shows, and people walking the street with signs for cheap beer and cheap drinks, and the bright lights almost felt assaultive -- but also fun. Clearly they are geared towards people who want to get drunk as fast and as cheap as possible which is not something I'm interested in doing. Not sure I'd need to do Bourbon St too many more times. We ended up in one club listening to New Orleans-style jazz for awhile, and then finished the evening at a blues club. The interesting thing was that I asked a couple of people during the day about where they go to hear good music and the answer was "home." Apparently a lot of the musicians have not returned to New Orleans and the music scene just isn't was it used to be. Of course, you can hear good stuff in small clubs and bars throughout the city, but those places are hard to find if you only have 3 days. I liked what I heard, so I was happy.
Day 3 we took a bus tour to 2 plantations, one American and one Creole. I learned that the two cultures were very different -- different architecture for the plantation houses, different social rules, different religions and languages, different ways of running the plantation. It was fascinating. And one of the plantations was part of the origin of the Uncle Remus Br'er Rabbit stories (although at the time the stories were collected by folklorists, there was no Uncle Remus -- he was invented later). And we capped our trip by a return trip to Commander's Palace because we just had to try a few more things on the menu. It was SO worth it!!!!
So now I'm home trying to rest up and get ready for the next trip which is next week. On to Orlando and Harry Potter.
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