There are more palms on Canal Street. And maybe Bourbon Street is smellier. Well, I don’t remember it being this smelly at all. It has something of the third-world pong to it these days.
We settle in to our Country Inn by Carlson hotel on the delightfully-named Magazine Street. Well, after I have upgraded our room.
Club Carlson hotels have become one of our preferred brands. This quirky hotel is in a repurposed warehouse and our assigned suite is set off a walkway in a rustic atrium and its only light is a window onto the walkway. No privacy. I am not a cave-lover. No, no, no.
I ask reception for a change and suddenly we are in the most charming digs with a window looking down onto Magazine Street and out on a darling historic courtyard across the way and
By night, it turns out to offer decorative lights from the dome of Harrah’s Casino and the interesting arrays of inhabitance from a number of high rise hotels. We love this little suite. It is a happy base from which to experience this wonderful old city.
Canal Street is just there at the end of the street and the French Quarter the other side of it - a stone's throw.
After a spot of expert hotel room nesting, we head off for an exploratory expedition.
Of course New Orleans is riddled with tourists.
It’s the middle of the afternoon but Bourbon Street is all a-totter with drunks.
People carry drinks in long plastic containers or polystyrene cups.
Live music is blasting from almost
Here's one which sounds like real jazz. We drift in and listen for a while. The audience is settled around tables nursing long drinks. The jazz band plays from the stage but the ghosts of New Orleans jazz greats are playing silently all around the bar in the form of huge bronze sculptures.
A lot of people are wearing Mardi Gras beads although it is not Mardi Gras. Shops are selling them everywhere. They have become the lei of Louisiana.
But the idea of a drink is luring us. Our walk becomes a search for the perfect place.
So many bars are already crowded.
I fancy an upstairs balcony bar but it becomes evident that it is strictly a gay place. Lots of S&M garb and poncy spiky hair. Burly gym-toned lads outside are having noisy play fights with fans, making loud cracking sounds as they whip them open and closed and whirl them around at each other.
Finally we find a bar at the quieter end of
I go in and ask please, please, would it be possible to have drinks that are not in plastic? I’d love a cocktail in a proper cocktail glass.
The barman agrees and I pore over the cocktail menu, finally choosing a Pineapple Kamakazitini - pineapple vodka, triple sec, sour, lime juice and pineapple juice. A plain little drink. Bruce just wants whisky on the rocks.
The service is absurdly slow. They forget the order and the waiter has to come and ask. The barman is working on a complicated cocktail, explains the waiter. My mind reels. But we are in
Funny old Bourbon Street. It is not a daytime place. It is pretty scruffy. But oh, the characters. The black kids brilliantly playing percussion on milk crates and plastic paint buckets. The gaggles of happy people with their drinks. The odd bods in costume. The groups with their drinks up on lacy balconies. Oh, look, a girl on that balcony is wiggling bare buttocks at us. She’s wearing a showgirl thongs outfit. Oh, she
It is noisy. The sound of music streams out of every bar: whining blues, strident pop, wailing soul, pulsing jazz. We make our way off the street, doing what people ever have done, admiring the darling old buildings and their glory of iron lace. Look. Here's the legendary Pat O’Briens. We walk through a shady covered alley into the O’Brien’s courtyard garden which, of course, is hopping. I had a Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane when I was 18. Then they served them in lovely long souvenir take-away glasses. These days they come in jumbo plastic cups. I have one, anyway. We sit in the courtyard to
Bruce has to drag me out into the warm twilight and we ramble forth, just a bit on the New Orleans sloshed style. Down to the Jackson
Food. We need dinner. We find a place and are shown into a courtyard cooled by giant fans. We order drinks and food and wait. And wait. And wait. We are the only people in the courtyard. Waiters go to and fro to the kitchen. We remind ours that we are still waiting for drinks. We wait. We wave and remind again. Eventually, a waiter approaches us with food. No, no. We still have not had the pre-dinner drinks. Dammit. We are not ready to eat. We are waiting for drinks. What the?
With which righteous indignation we get up and huff out.
Oblivious to the fact that we have forgotten the lovely pictures for which we have just paid so much money, we meander off in search of somewhere else to eat. Of course, there is no shortage. This is the New Orleans French Quarter.
We find a gorgeous place. Pierre Maspero’s Established 1788. We are insane enough to order another Hurricane. Oh, heresy. This one is way better than Pat O’Brien’s. Our food comes at the proper time. Seared redfish and rice. It is fabulous albeit, as we are discovering, the food is rich here in Nola.
We are decidedly squiffy as we find our way back to our heavenly hotel.
And then we remember the pictures. Oh, shit.
Next day we brave their doors to see if they will return the art. They do. Phew.
We have become fond of taking tours to get an overview of cities we visit and, through our hotel concierge, we have booked a tour here. The bus collects us at the hotel. It is a one-woman operation. Micky, the driver, is also the guide. She’s likeable but she speaks very fast.
First up, she trains us all to say New Orleans correctly. One word, she says. Make it one word. Like this. Nyorlins.
She takes us to Lake Ponchartrain and the levees and shows us where the breaches occurred. She pauses the bus at length outside the fenced-off work site beside the breached canal to show the lack of work going on. Indeed, there are portable offices aplenty but no sign of action. It has been like this for ages, says Micky. She expounds on the way the flood happened, the way it was in the surroundings… She is highly critical of the subsequent engineering which is supposed to prevent a repeat of such a catastrophe. The reparations are neither finished nor, in local opinion, she says, even begin to be adequate for any such future calamity. She tells of people trapped in their attics. She describes graphically how hard it is to break out from an attic onto the roof and how some people simply died in there. These days people are keeping axes in the attic so they will never be trapped again. She shows us the more recent houses with their high stilts. The flood area seems almost completely rebuilt.
We cruise through the Garden District gasping at the mansions of the rich and at the Halloween follies of some. There is one place which has a massive display of skeletons. Maybe a hundred or so, some climbing the trees, some standing as newlyweds, all of them labelled with really bad puns. Halloween kitsch on a
We wander an ancient above ground cemetery and hear the stories of a year and a day rules for additions to graves.
Magically, we are taken to the biggest public park in the land, and stop there at the Morning Call garden restaurant to eat the famous New Orleans beignets which are hot and sweet and doughy and deliciously wicked, swimming in powdered sugar. We sigh guiltily over them.
The park itself is lovely with playgrounds, a stream with flocks of ibis, live oaks laden with Spanish moss and a lavish sculpture garden with works which do not turn me on.
We fill our days all too easily in New Orleans. We walk and explore more.
And we eat.
We dine several times at the Creole Kitchen nearby. Their shrimp etouffe is to die for. One of the finest dishes I encounter in Nola.
We go to the famous Ruby Slipper brunch and lunch establishment nearby in Magazine Street and eat extravagantly rich and sea foods which we try to offset with salads. Fat hope.
And we treat ourselves to a night at New Orleans renowned and historic Antoine’s.
It is all very formal and trad and immense.
Our waiter takes us on a bit of a tour and tells us a lot about the family, the matriarch of which lives on the premises albeit the place is run by the son.
There are comprehensive archives and special dining rooms decorated with original colour and artefacts. It
Our waiter has worked there most of his adult life. He has an apprentice working with him albeit he does not seem too keen on her intruding on his shtick. The place is huge and far from full. We are in the second dining area and other diners are dotted here and there.
I have to have oysters at Antoine's
And then, perhaps, a bit disappointed.
This is my first introduction to the odd way in which I find Nola to be afraid of its famous oysters. There is so much fancy hot-cooked dressing loaded on top of the poor little
Bruce has escargot and they are delicate and in a luscious garlicky sauce.
However, for my main course I have a fish called pompano. Oh, bliss. Oh,
The jubilee cherries dessert turns out to be a performance piece. The waiter not only flames the cherries but, telling us to sit back, he flames the whole table, tossing flaming spirits on the table cloth with mischievous abandon. It is quite spectacular. And the mixture of spirits upon the cherries is glorious to eat. We purr out into the night. Antoine’s has not blown us away with its culinary brilliance but it has pleased us. It has been a valuable New Orleans experience.
I try oysters again at another restaurant and, again, find them smothered beyond recognition. I become fixated by this odd phenomenon of oyster obliteration.
It is rustic slick with a bit of a hipster spirit in its wait staff. The restaurant hostess is a beautiful artwork of a chic girl, swishing with a dancer’s deportment between the tables in an exquisite flowing kimono. She sets a sense of style. The male waiters are neat and bright and fleet footed.
Cochon digresses from the rich Nola oyster tradition. It does its oysters wood-fired with chili garlic butter. Oh yes. Cochon does them proud. I am in heaven.
I really want to try Cochon's rabbit
But, oh, my, I do eat all the pineapple upside down cake dessert. It is a micro upside down cake with coconut lime icecream -
Of the plantation options, we choose to do it our way and drive to the most accessible one - Destrehan. We run early since it is an even
Inside, it is a joy of quirky murals and decor. A friendly, bustling southern waitress brings iced tea and good spirit and then one of the best meals ever.
I have gumbo, a pleasantly spicy soup laden with fresh, succulent seafood. It is gorgeous. Gorgeous, I tell you!
Then it is grits cake with crab sauce. Naturally it is very substantial. Louisiana food is not for sissies. It is as hearty as it is delicious. Calorific big time. No wonder there are so many fatties.
We waddle out into the hot day and take ourselves for a walk along the levee - which is really not very pretty. The Mississippi is a working river. There is a cement plant and all the river boats coming and going. I spot a post office by the road and head down to buy stamps. It is never easy finding post offices in the US. It is a funny little post office and we are very exotic visitors. The women are fascinated that we come from Australia and awe-struck that we are on this huge road trip. We get to talk for quite a while because it turns out they are not used to selling international stamps and it takes them a while to liberate them.
Still with a little time to spare, we drive down the back streets of this community and find ourselves in a narrow street of near destitution. The homes are falling-down poverty. Just a few are maintained and looking loved. It is a bit of a culture shock. Some of them have yards in which huge wooden boat-like things are sitting. Bruce identifies them as the skeletons of Mardi Gras floats. And we are reminded of the TV series Treme and its tale of the African American devotion to the glamour and beauty of their place in the parade.
Destrehan was the site of a slave rebellion.
Of course, the slaves did not win. A lot of the rebels were subsequently put to death.
All this, gently imparted by Bonnie. She did not whitewash the lives of the whites, either. She told of the illnesses which were to kill their the children, their roles in running the plantation, their fear of their slaves and the general tensions of that period of Louisiana history which so often is tinted with antebellum Scarlett O’Hara glamour.
We learn from Don at Destrehan, giving a demonstration on the building method of Bousillage, that the American Indians, now more correctly referred to as Native Americans, had taught the plantation settlers
It was wise to pause for a goodly time in New Orleans.
We do not do everything but we do everything we craved to do in the time that we have. We walk a lot. We explore the famous marketplace which is now pretty much stalls of identical souvenirs art identical prices. They are all run by hard-faced Indian traders. A bit of a ruthless tourist trap. Indeed, a lot if not most of the souvenir places around the city also are Indian-run, just as they are in Atlantic City.
The souvenirs are very highly-priced and most of them very cheap in quality but fairly well contrived to appeal to almost everyone - from the ubiquitous beads and raunchy tank tops to these t-shirts. Did they see us coming?
No comments:
Post a Comment