Florida is way too long. You drive and drive and are still in the same damn state. No satisfaction, as in, "We've driven through X states today."
But undeterred we drove north from Sarasota to pick up our trail again at I-10 and then headed west on the road that will eventually take us a mile from our home. We drove the length of the panhandle, then across a sliver of Alabama, through M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I, and at last into Louisiana and the City of New Orleans. It was a long day.
New Orleans is one of those places that it's hard to say anything new or interesting about, so I won't. It was refreshingly like a foreign city, with a seasoning of outlaw Americana. And fortunately, it rained every day, which was also refreshing, keeping us from the sweltering heat we expected.
We stayed at a bed and breakfast in a large antebellum house in the Fauborg Marigny district, blocks away from the French Quarter. If you're lucky enough to get cool weather like we did, the summer is a great time to visit New Orleans. It's cheap and not crowded with too many drunken idiots.
We did quite a bit of just wandering around in the Quarter, enjoying the architecture (which is Spanish, actually, not French) and general ambience. We visited a lot of the usual sites: Jackson Square, the Uruline Convent, Jean LaFitte's blacksmith (and smuggling) shop, the French Market, Café du Monde, and so on.
We also took a rather desirable streetcar to the Garden District to see the old mansions and gnarled oak giants tearing up the sidewalk (yes, we saw Anne Rice's house, but, alas, no interview). At the nearby Lafayette No. 1 Cemetery, we happened upon a rather odd tour with a rather odd local character, who told us all sorts of odd stories, relishing in particular the details of Big Easy burial practices (he also found time to hit on the young German women in the group).
And since we needed even more hot cemetery action, the next day we took a more official tour of the St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery, with a healthy dose of voodoo (including a visit to a working voodoo temple) added in to the mix.
We need say little about New Orleans' reputation for fine dining. While the heavy continental culinary influences did pose some vegetarian challenges, it wasn't as difficult as I feared, and we even found a good vegetarian (and mostly vegan) restaurant. I was pleased especially that the well known Gumbo Shop not only had a vegetable gumbo, but also offered a daily vegetarian special. I'll thank all the European tourists.
The music scene is equally famous, of course, and though we really went out on the town only one night (being exhausted after driving in the first day), we made the best of it. We caught a fabulous zydeco band at the Old Opera House on Bourbon Street, and then some classic New Orleans jazz at the famous Preservation Hall. And for cool down, we heard an organ trio at a bar back in Marigny, where there were a billion choices of beer and liquor, including some tasty small batch bourbon.
The only disappointment was in fact Bourbon Street. My impression is that it's been pretty commercial for a while now, but it has now gone well beyond that, resembling more of a Spring Break beach town, with a hint of Las Vegas sleaze thrown in for good measure. At the least it has tasteful architecture, you might say, and if you're in to downing daquiris and screaming, "Ohmigod, I'm... soooo... WASTED!", well then Bourbon Street is the place for you. I'll keep to the rest of the Quarter, thank you.
So we did pretty well in under 48 hours, but it wasn't even close to enough time, so we'll be back.
I garontee!
Miles: 8109
Posted by yozhik at August 13, 2003 04:17 AM