Eveli in New Orleans 2001

The Locale

We stayed in the Bourbon Orleans, in a fifth-floor room that had a private balcony facing the corner of Bourbon and Dumaine, smack dab in the middle of the French Quarter. Most mornings I took my mug of coffee and my Anne Rice historical novel (The Feast of All Saints, which paints an absorbing and apparently accurate picture of 1840's New Orleans) out onto the balcony. We happened to be directly across from the Oz disco, a 24/7 party paradise. Unfortunately, we tended to go to bed rather earlier than the denizens of Oz, so we had to contend with thumpa-thumpa music at various hours of the night. But the view sure made up for it.

We got a kick out of one of the window displays on the next block of Bourbon. Of course, these are all Ken dolls, except for the two Barbies on the second floor on the left.

Our hotel was about a three-minute walk from Jackson Square, the quintessential photo op. Apparently this is the first horse-y statue ever where they figured out how to get both front hooves off the ground.

Most of the days were cloudy or a bit rainy, and cold, around 50 degrees, but on the few days where the sun came out, Jackson Square really popped with psychics, balloon-animal-makers, joke-tellers, sax players, and portrait artists. This magician cracked that if he could have made the kid levitate with no supports, he wouldn't have to work the street. (Whaddya want f'nothin'??)

Walking and Shopping

The French Quarter is so compact that you can easily criss-cross it several times a day, if you're not too tired from all the partying you probably did the night before. Iron lacework and funky colors abound, and we were lucky enough to be there just as people were putting up their Mardi Gras decorations, which is like doing Christmas all over again. This building on Royal St. is typical, though it still had me oohing and aahing every time I got near it.

Royal St. is loaded with antique stores. We went into Joan Good Antique Jewelry, and while I bought a few pieces, Eli engaged in a bit of rogue consulting with Joan Good Herself, who was having problems with the fellow she'd hired to do her website.

New Orleans is the kind of place where you just happen to stumble across parades, even if it's not Mardi Gras yet. On one and the same day, we came upon a military parade in the Central Business District honoring African-Americans who fought in WWII, and also what seemed to be an impromptu parade of a few street performers and a ragtag band of tourists following them outside our hotel at sunset.

Food and Drink

We spent a lot of time at restaurants owned by one or another member of the famous Brennan restaurateur family. These people are just too darned good at what they do! We dined at their Red Fish Grill (local seafood), Dickie Brennan's Steakhouse (steak, natch), and Bacco (Italian), without a single disappointment. We also stopped at their Mr. B's Bistro for a drink before dinner, and found our bartender willing to capture the following.

Pat O'Brien's is the place to drink in the French Quarter, because they invented the Hurricane. A Hurricane is basically rum and what we used to call "bug juice" in summer camp, but that didn't stop Eli from ordering it in all its glory when we visited Pat O'Brien's On the River. I got the more modest Breeze, which had a lot less than the usual complement of four ounces of rum.

The original Pat's has several different bar areas, including a "dueling pianos" bar where everyone sings along, a jukebox joint, and a courtyard with several lovely fountains with fires that are fed by gas jets.

We found two other favorite, don't-miss places: The Gumbo Shop, to which we returned again and again to get Creole staples such as red beans and rice and jambalaya, and Poppy's Grill, a 1950's-themed coffee shop that was open whenever we needed a grease fix. We also found ourselves returning to the Café du Monde for truly artery-busting beignets and weird street-performer music. One place we never got around to trying was this one, though we were curious about how they would prepare their crawfish...

Music

We didn't make too many attempts to actually seek out "real" music performances. When you're in the Quarter, music of all descriptions just pours over you constantly: Dixieland jazz, blues, Zydeco, Cajun, 1980's disco, 1980's hair bands, karaoke, you name it. I especially loved going to the jazz museum in the old U.S. Mint; you're accompanied by a soundtrack that makes you want to "bounce" the whole way through. There I saw an advertisement for the Satchmo Diet ("A little laxative at least once a week is always nice!"), a picture of one of the harlots from the wild Storyville days (hey, she has my figure!), and a great poster for a 1964 jazz concert in Germany.

On the S.S. Natchez river cruise, which plies a ten-mile course downriver from the New Orleans port, not only did we get a (very loud) blast of real-live steamboat-powered calliope music as we boarded, but we also heard some great Dixieland jazz by the Steamboat Stompers once we were on board. Note how the physiognomy of each Stomper matches his instrument.

Tourist Stuff

New Orleans is unique; it's so drenched in history and tradition that I don't think tourists will ever entirely take over. That said, there's still plenty of regular touristy fun to be had here. We visited the Aquarium, whose exhibits are really amazing: huge sharks in huge tanks, sea dragons with seaweed-like protrusions, jellyfish with neon running lights, penguins taking a dip... Unfortunately, they were all so shy that they strategically blurred all the pictures I took.

We also visited the Audubon Zoo, which had some pretty spectacular exhibits of its own. Why they had an exhibit of a common raccoon, I don't know, but I thought he made a pretty picture.

This zoo is the home of the famous white alligators. They're leucistic, not albino, which means their eyes are normally colored. This doesn't make them any less creepy, though. They were in the Swamp area of the zoo, which also includes an exhibit called the Gumbo Trail. On the Gumbo Trail, little aquarium and terrarium tanks with redfish, snakes, etc. are interspersed with signs offering recipes on how to cook them. Does that take guts, or what?!

We couldn't resist documenting the existence of R.O.U.S.'s (capybaras), which Wesley bravely battled in the Fire-Swamp.

One day we took the ferry across the Mississippi to Algiers Point and visited Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World, the company that makes most of the world's Mardi Gras floats and props. I couldn't get enough of the props -- such cool stuff.

The End

Thanks to Todd and Sabine for great advice about traveling in New Orleans!