New Orleans

Saturday, June 7
After spending Friday evening at the Relay for Life at Barstow High School, we were out the door by 6:00 a.m. trying to exit our garage at Crown Center; however, due to the Rock Fest and the Hospital Hill Run, turning south on Main Street was not an option. Barricades blocked the street in every direction on both Main and Grand. We squeezed between the barricades at the intersection of Grand and Pershing and were finally on our way!

During our 14-hour drive we listened to James Patterson’s audio, Double Cross, which we checked out of our library at Santa Fe Place. Playing time was 8 hours. We still had 2 chapters to go when we arrived at our hotel in the French Quarter around 8:30 p.m. After checking in we headed out on foot to Bourbon Street, just one block away, for our obligatory Hurricane drink. Bourbon Street wasn’t as crowded as I remembered it from years ago, but everything that makes it fun was still there: the men tossing beads from balconies above, the “no close” bars, open containers in the street, mounted cops, street cops, undercover cops, and music everywhere! We enjoyed the sights and sounds immensely, gingerly stepping around the ubiquitous road apples and drunks. We saw a man being thrown out of a bar. Four cops had him handcuffed in no time, and 2 mounted cops trotted over to assist. Funny, he didn’t look too threatening, just a nerdy tourist type! We made our way to the Blues Club where we enjoyed a 6-piece band accompanying 4 different singers. A man and woman were spinning on the dance floor when the man failed to catch the woman’s hand when she came out of a spin. She crashed to the floor, cracking her head on the stage! She was stunned for a moment but got up and walked out under her own power. I hopped into line behind the trumpet player when he marched through the audience while playing music and collecting tips. Finally we headed back to the hotel, stopping for dinner at 11:30 p.m. at the Red Fish Grill, recommended to us by our valet. (Always trust those guys! They know where the good food is!) We ordered a sampler of coconut shrimp, chicken satay and deep fried oysters. We crawled into bed around midnight.

Acro Girl's Pair Took 1st Place!

Sunday, June 8
The alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. Ouch! We ate the continental breakfast at the hotel and headed to Elmwood Gymnastics to watch Acro Girl compete, listening to the final chapters of Double Cross on the way. We had lunch at Zea Rotisserie & Grill, a small Louisiana chain; Conrad had red beans and rice with shrimp and andouille sausage. I had shrimp ettufe. Then we had to run an errand at Target for one of Acro Girl’s teammates. And did we feel like hicks going to the big city for the first time! It was a 2-story Target, but that’s not the part that amazed us. It was the escalator! There is one escalator for humans and another for shopping carts! As you approach the escalator you push your cart into the appropriate escalator, and it is locked down and held level and deposited at the top where you retrieve it! It was awesome! We had to watch it for a few minutes! We returned to Elmwood Gymnastics for the afternoon sessions. Acro Girl is amazing to watch and has quite a story of her own, overcoming overwhelming odds in order to continue competing. But that will be another blog. At Elmwood Gymnastics, Acro Girl's pair took first place, and her trio took second place! After we left the competition we drove across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the 24-mile long bridge which consists of two, 2-lane spans running parallel across Lake Pontchartrain connection Jefferson Parish on the South Shore and St. Tammany Parish on the North Shore. Amazing! We dropped the car back at the hotel and walked to the Riverwalk Marketplace, constructed on the site of the 1984 World’s Fair. Okay, it’s just a mall, but the Mississippi River Front was worth the walk! We took a ferry to Algears. Then we walked to Jackson Square and got had by a man and woman with 2 small children. We smiled at the children and that was all it took. The man and woman immediately squirted soap on our shoes and started polishing, and of course they wanted money for their service. Sheesh! Jackson Square was filled with street performers and an appreciative audience! Dancers and music! Horse-drawn carriages! Artists of every type, and mimes! We made our way to the Two Sisters Restaurant and walked through it to Bourbon Street. We stopped at La Bayou Restaurant for alligator bites. Conrad ordered gumbo and I had a grilled crawfish salad. The food was pretty good but our waitress seemed a little stoned!


Acro Girl's Trio Took 2nd Place!

Monday, June 9
No alarm clocks for us this morning! But we were up in plenty of time to walk to Café Du Monde for the requisite chicory coffee and beignets. Yum! We strolled to the Visitor Center and signed up for a 2:00 city tour. We had plenty of time to kill, so we walked to the flea market and the French market. We stopped outside the Calypso Café and listened to live music. It seemed like a great place to come back to that night for dinner, plus they had boiled crawfish on the menu, and we hadn’t had any of that yet.

We walked over to St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square to look for Faulkner House Books. We finally found it . . . it was in Pirate’s Alley on the OTHER side of the cathedral. We bought Soldiers’ Pay, which William Faulkner wrote while living in that location in 1925. We stopped at Napoleon House Bar and Café, a 200-year old landmark in the French Quarter. The building's first occupant, Nicholas Girod, was mayor of New Orleans from 1812 to 1815. He offered his residence to Napoleon in 1821 as a refuge during his exile, but Napoleon never made it. He died of stomach cancer while in captivity. But the house boasts his name anyhow! From there we headed to the Crescent City Brewhouse for some New Orleans brew, namely the Red Stallion. Conrad ordered the pasta jambalaya and I had the poboy shrimp. Our city tour consisted of a stop at a cemetery, a drive past the breached levees and the famous New Orleans Garden District in the section of New Orleans known as the "American" section of town past the homes of author Anne Rice and Millionaire’s Row where Nicolas Cage and Bob Dylan live, among others. We saw where the St. Charles trolley ends, and where Mardi Gras begins (marked by strings of beads still hanging in the trees on the overhead trolley lines.) After the tour ended we walked back the Calypso for some of that boiled crawfish, but to our surprise it was closed! We found the French Market Café and ate boiled crawfish, alligator bites, gumbo and chicken stuffed with crabmeat and crawfish. From there we wandered a short walk from far the end of the French Quarter to the Fauborg Marigny area, a lovely, boutique-style neighborhood where the locals go to hear music on Frenchman Street.

Tuesday, June 10
The alarm jolted us awake at 5:00 a.m. and we were on the road by 6:00 a.m. I read Soldiers’ Pay while Conrad listened to CDs and enthusiastically sang off-key. After an uneventful trip we pulled into Crown Center at 8:30 p.m.