New Orleans in a nutshell

Farewell New Orleans. I will definitely be back. This is by far my favorite city on these particular travels to date and two and a half days is not enough. I don’t know if I ended up in the right spots music wise because I found Memphis much better in that regard but in terms of the whole atmosphere in the French Quarter and walking around the Market district and along the dirty Mississippi River, New Orleans takes the cake. I often felt like I was walking around on a movie set… the brick sidings on the buildings, balconies, really lovely architecture. Bourbon street was okay but that is the type of thing that is better (and perhaps safer) with friends. I’ll tell you what though, Gheera has been the biggest hit on the streets of New Orleans. Everyone loves her! We probably were looking a bit homeless, however, when the two of us would sit down to rest against brick buildings covered in graffiti. I told mom and dad I was thinking about grabbing my guitar out of my car (if I could get to it) and putting the open case beside us to collect a little extra cash for the trip.

So two days ago we spent about four hours just walking all over the city. As I mentioned, we hit up the French Quarter (aka Vieux Carre), going up and down pretty much every street (I liked all of them except Bourbon street during the day for some reason), as well as the French Market District, where we stopped as Café du Monde per Dad’s recommendation, to get some beignets. I was able to tie Gheera to the railing and sit at a table against it on the other side to enjoy a cup of coffee and a heap of powdered sugar with a few beignets on the side. I poured my water into the saucer for my coffee cup and set it on the ground for Gheer-face. The tables around me saw her, fell in love just like everyone else and started all passing me their water cups. I think I ended up with six empty cups on my table and the only reason they stopped was because she stopped drinking the water. She was a perfect angel until I gave her a little taste of my food then a few moments later I felt her breath on the back of my neck; she had jumped up on the rail and was looking longingly at mound of powdered sugar. At that point the beignets were gone of course. Those things were freaking amazing.

We walked around the outdoor market and I tried an ice cold Louisiana lemonade (yes there may be some rum in this) and sat down to listen to some music for awhile. After a few hours of meandering around the streets and along the river, we headed back to the car and the hotel for the evening.

Yesterday morning, we took it slow, worked out a bit and laid by the pool, having extended our hotel stay for yet another night because I wasn’t quite ready to leave. In the afternoon I left Gheera to sleep on her bed (actually my bed because it turns out she likes to snuggle a whole lot at night) and went to check out the art district. A lot of the museums were closed for one reason or another but I did go into the WWII museum briefly, although not into the actually exhibits. After some coffee and a chocolate chip cookie, I headed back to the hotel to take my doggy out and then back into the city for dinner at a way to expensive but absolutely fantastic restaurant- Broussards. I highly recommend Broussards salad and the pecan crusted grouper along with the house cabernet. They definitely looked at me a bit funny, being all dressed up and in there alone- one even gathered up the courage to ask me why. I told him that it was a “long tragic story” and left it at that. I mean, come on! I have to find some way to amuse myself. I took a walk down Bourbon street after dinner checking out all the bars and music and finally settled on the one with the best sound. I didn’t know that three for one beers meant that they would give me all three at the same time so I ended up parked there for some time. One of the singers took my camera at some point and started singing about me. I’ll try to get that posted.

So New Orleans now comes highly recommended by me. Now Gheera and I must hit the road. We plan to make it to Dallas today.