Our camping in New Orleans ended up being the worst we have had during our trip. It was the closest we could get to downtown, but it was still a 15 minute drive to get to the French Quarter. It was a big white gravel lot that had no trees; this was not only unattractive, it also led to some extremely hot, sunny wake up calls. As an added bonus we were locked behind a gate from 5pm on since prostitutes and drunk people wandered the major street outside the park. It was to this delightful scene that we brought Bryce after picking him up at midnight on our first day in New Orleans. I don't think he was too impressed. It grew on us a little though over the few days we were there, as there was a nice pool and hot tub which came in handy during the few hours we had to relax while we were in the city.
Aside from our accommodations, New Orleans was a great city! It really had a nice vibe to it and the locals were really keen to talk to us and give us suggestions on what we should see. Through talking to people we had fantastic Po-Boys (Which seem to basically be like a big sandwich made from French Bread-the filling of choice was battered, fried shrimp with melted cheese and roast beef gravy), had a great walk in a swamp, and caught some really good live music along Frenchman Street which evidently is where the locals go to party.
The Three Amigos, together again. In the background is Jackson Square.
I guess I am getting a little ahead of myself. Our first activity in New Orleans, fairly early the morning after we picked up Bryce, was to do a great National Park-led tour of the French Quarter which explained the history of the city, starting way back with the native peoples in the region and bringing us up through the Spanish, French, and finally American influence. With that bit of history under our belt we visited an exhibit on Hurricane Katrina which brought back our memories of the news coverage of the event while at the same time giving more of the details behind the news. There was also an excellent exhibit on how and why all the levies failed in the city which led to all the flooding. On a lighter note there was also an excellent exhibit on Mardis Gras, the parades, and the krewes (krewes seem to be like crews, with more pageantry) that run them. I had to hurry through that exhibit a bit as I had spent too much time with the levies so I can't report much other than how seriously they take the ridiculousness of the event. Over the top costumes, floats, invitations, etc.
They were moving some of the parade floats around while we were.
One of the great costumes up for viewing at the Mardi Gras Exhibit.
We wandered the streets a bit then headed back to camp for a bit of a rest before heading back out for the evening. It was really hot down there and it was nice, if not necessary, to escape the weather now and again. That evening we headed back into town for what the Lonely Planet indicated was the best Po-Boy restaurant in town. Unfortunately it was closed, but, like I mentioned earlier, thanks to friendly advice we were able to find a place which really might have had the best sandwiches in town. They were amazing. Better than you would think a sandwich could be. Also, being on that end of town we were able to check out St. Charles Avenue, a beautiful and famous tree and wonderful-old-home lined street. At this point we attempted to round out the day with a visit to one of the city's above ground cemeteries but they all seemed to lock up early. Before heading to bed we had a few beers and I had a cigar (I forgot to note earlier that we checked out a cigar store where men were hand making cigars in the shop. It was funny, evidently it was Cuban tobacco seed, grown in the Dominican Republic, and then made in America. It was a good cigar for all of that.) while we sat in the hot tub. A pretty good start to our time with Bryce.
Me, eating a Po-Boy. It seems like Bryce is cheering me on a little bit, but I think he was actually just enthused about how good they were.
The next day began with another fact filled adventure when we sat in for a Creole cooking course. The course might have been the best (non-free) bang-for-your-buck activity we have done on this trip. It was two hours long during which an engaging grandmother told stories, and the history of New Orleans while making several regional dishes. The dishes included gumbo, jambalaya, bread pudding, and pralines. They were all delicious. We also got a local beer while we ate lunch.
The three of us with our little cooking instructor.
After that we made our way to another national park in the region. This one was in a proper swamp instead of the city. Half the park was closed as a man had gone missing off the boardwalk the previous day (amazingly he survived four days in the swamp!). From what the ranger indicated, copperhead snakes were generally found only in the part of the park which was closed so we weren't that heart broken and we still had a few kilometers of trail to work with. The intro sign indicated that things we might see on the trail were basically turtles, snakes, and alligators. The edges of the path were heavily grown in with low bushes, so our hearts were all racing as we walked mostly single file, down the middle of the path waiting for something to lunge out at us. Nothing did. We did see many, many snakes though and eventually even some young alligators. It was a cool walk and was neat to see all the animals.
Some of the cool creatures we saw in the swamp. We only got one blurry photo of the snakes, but we saw alot of them too.
From the swamp we made our way back down town. We were heading towards a city park for some free live music when we came across Antoine's Restaurant. It looked really neat from the outside and after some humming and hawing we decided to go in and check out the display cases. The bartender saw us come in and invited us on a tour of the place. It was then that we learned how famous it was and got to check out the many dining rooms in the restaurant, several intended for select groups (like Mardi Gras parade Krewes). Aside from just being a cool restaurant there was also alot of history stored in the people themselves, evidently some of the waiters had been there for generations, as had the patrons they served. After the tour we made our way to the park for the music, which sounded good. After awhile though Bryce was reasonably burning out and we went in hunt of coffee. This didn't seem available anywhere, beer yes, coffee no. We settled on some Coke and headed back to camp.
We decided that night would be our big night out in New Orleans. Unfortunately cabbing back to the campsite would have been too expensive so Meg volunteered to be the nights dd. I think probably she regretted that in the end. Our first act of the night was of course a stroll down infamous Bourbon Street. We had walked in and out of Bourbon Street a few times, and I have to say even at 10 am some of the bars and their patrons were starting to ramp up. By the evening the whole street was going crazy. It was great! A really fun, party atmosphere, with people walking down the street with giant cups of beer or large musical-note-shaped plastic glasses filled with some alcoholic drink, probably a hurricane. Speaking of the hurricane, that was our second drink of the night (the first of course being a quick beer as soon as hit the strip). The hurricane is a local favorite and we stopped by the bar which invented them and each had one. We had heard a saying surrounding the drink which I can't remember fully, but went something along the lines of "Drink one and you're feeling no pain, drink two and you forget everything..." (I think drink three probably involved dying or ending up in jail). Anyway, the saying was bang on, it was a smooth tasting drink with alot of alcohol and it started our evening well. While we had the cocktail we also had a chance to talk to a couple of local guys who were hanging out at the bar. They were really nice fellows and one of them, Chef Joe, gave us his number so we could give him a shout when we were upstate a bit (where they lived).
From there the night got a little vague honestly enough. I think we popped by another bar along Bourbon and then headed over to Frenchmens street, we had been told this was the street that the locals party at. At first the street seemed a little quiet, but we soon found the busier area and checked out a few bars with some really good live music. At the end of the night things get really fuzzy as we were hanging out with a fellow and he bought us a few whiskey and cokes. Meg reports that the last thing we did before heading home was crash a somewhat private after party at a Bourbon street bar in order to go to the washroom.
We weren't feeling great the next morning as we slowly, very slowly, packed up the tent, gathered our belongings and left the gravel lot behind. It was about 1pm by the time we got on the road and somewhat appropriately since I was feeling half dead we headed for a graveyard to check it out while it was open. The graveyard was pretty neat with many of the mausoleums dating back centuries. We had an animated, though fact free, discussion on what happened to each of the bodies as the next one was added in. We then checked out another Po-Boy shop (good, but not as good as the first one) and decided to check out a jazz talk held, again, by the national parks system (they are well set up in New Orleans with national parks). The talk was excellent, covering the history of jazz through slavery and share cropping and religion, but including live songs along the way by really excellent musicians. It was an audience participation kind of music and we had to do our best to clap along with time to the music (as if we were chopping wood evidently, and if we missed time we got our hands chopped off, or at least ridiculed by the main presenter). Buoyed by the music we decided that the right thing to do next would be go for a run. I really didn't think it was that good of an idea, but Bryce was pretty hell-bent that it would make us feel better. I didn't, I felt sick. The other two seemed to have a really nice time though. We headed over to a KOA on the west, and heading-out of town, side of New Orleans and setup camp for our last night in town.
Some of the cool mausoleums in the above ground graveyards.
Jazz, as evidenced by the National Park mentioned earlier, is a big thing in New Orleans and we decided we couldn't leave town without seeing some live. Bryce had chatted up a fellow the night before and got some good advice on a place to go, but through some strange googling magic we ended up going to a completely different location (unknowingly). The music ended up being really cool though. At first we thought we had been taken for the price of cover. The band was three middle aged guys dressed as if they might be doing Sunday yard work. Then they started playing and we knew we had been robbed. It was a cacophony of sounds without coherence. Slowly though the music started taking shape and it was really grooving. It turns out it was totally improvisational; one of the guys would start wailing on his instrument as a solo (there was a stand up base, a guitar and a drum set) and then the other two would get the rhythm and start falling in and the sound would just evolve from there. Though it was really cool sounding, the night before caught up with me eventually and I almost fell asleep off my seat so we headed back to the tent. As a side note on jazz music, as awkward and difficult as the start of each song was to listen to, it was even worse watching the few brave souls who decided to dance to it. I think in an alternate setting people would have suspected they had a disease of the nervous system.
That was it for New Orleans. We had had an awesome time in the city and we are all pretty convinced that at some point we will be back for Mardi Gras. Actually that wasn't totally it for New Orleans, somewhere in all of that we went for a driving tour of the lower 9th ward. That was the really poor part of town that got so much press coverage after the flooding. Mainly I was hoping to find some of the rebuilt super houses I had read about in a few places and luckily we were able to find some just as we were leaving the area. Also though we saw alot of the poverty and broken down shacks that are so associated with New Orleans since the flood.
Just a shot of the French Quarter. As can be seen there is some lovely iron work, nice balconies and it is hard to find parking.
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