ahhh new orleans...
Usually when you travel to a place you've never been but have read and heard so much about, I find that when you get there you often end up thinking, "is this it?"
Not true with New Orleans. It was everything and more than I imagined. All the stereotypes are true. The good and evil sneaking around hand in hand like forbidden lovers.
It had been about a year since I had flown and I had forgotten something that is fascinating to me. When you land and have arrived at your gate, it's always a good few minutes before the door is open and you can de-plane, as it were. But everyone acts as if the plane will self-destruct in 60 seconds upon stopping. They leap out of their seats grab the crap they stowed above and because they can go nowhere and the overhead compartment is low, they just stand there bent over in a painful, contorted manner. And next they run off the plane into the terminal as if a stopwatch was on them. These are the same people who will STILL be waiting on the bags to come out when you leisurely stroll up later. People are hilarious I tell you.
We had a delightful time on the trip. The highlight perhaps for me, was Friday when we took the streetcar through the Garden District. I loved the stately, old houses and the very haunted Lafayette cemetery. In fact, as one who thinks at least they "sense" things otherwordly, I found those senses in an almost constant din everywhere I went. As if the buildings and streets were coated and oozing a rich patina of all that has gone before. In New Orleans good and evil and alive and dead are all very much alive and mingling together.
I think it's hard not to find good food there and I had some wonderful food. If my waitperson looked as if they had worked there forever, as most did, I simply put myself in their hands. As with Joy from Bon Mot, this paid off big time for me.
I encountered many great characters as well. Like Leonard, the self ascribed "human jukebox". I have no doubt when he started 44 years ago, he did sound just like Otis Redding or Jackie Wilson. Now, he mostly sounds like an old man missing some teeth, but still yet I enjoyed every second of his performance. Or the "beadman" in the Garden District. "Why don't you stand in the shade and wait? Why would you stand in the sun and melt so?" Why would I, indeed.
I consumed staggering quanities of a local beer Abita (esp tuesday night when it was free!) enough to likely drain the springs it comes from and will miss that muchly. I also had quite a bit of wine too while I'm in confessional mode.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the trip however, was well,...me. Not very long ago I would have been front and center on Bourbon Street and out until the cows came home (whatever in the world that means). But I honestly found Bourbon Street kinda so-whatish. A bunch of yahoos staggering around drinking over priced drinks. I steered away from them and looked for the not so obvious treasures of the French Quarter tucked away out of the main chaos. And there I think I found the real charm and pulse of New Orleans.
How depressing! I'm no longer out there being a public nuisance!
I guess I'm just resigned now to being a private nuisance.
But I promise you a nuisance all the same.
PS. I think I am going through cafe au lait and beignet withdrawal. I have the shakes. Someone please douse me with powdered sugar tout suite!