New Orleans – Part 3

 

 "Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say gonna beat dem Saints?"

It is a fact that if one were to have worn an Indianapolis Colts shirt in New Orleans during the time we visited, there is a 100% chance that they would have been beaten down mercilessly by a bunch of guys in drag. Surely, New Orleans is the type of place where even the manliest of men wouldn’t need an excuse to wear a dress if they felt like it. But an excuse presented itself nonetheless when the Saints advanced to the Super Bowl. In honor of a late sportscaster who promised his listeners that he would parade through town in a dress if the Saints ever made it to the Super Bowl, men throughout the city dug through the closets of their wives, or through the bins at local thrift stores to find the perfect fit for an impromptu parade that clogged city streets Sunday morning. Larger men sported loose, floral muumuus while the men with shapelier legs (who knew very well how shapely they were) decked themselves out in short sheath dresses.

Prior to wading through the throngs at the parade, we attended a group breakfast at the Oceana Restaurant, where this guy greeted us. In spite of everything I said above, I make no guarantees that he doesn’t dress like this everyday (I’m pretty sure the sportscaster never made any promises about handbags).

Mike contends that it ain’t N’awlins cookin’ unless everything’s had a good bath in some lard (or lard substitute). This was not disproven by the super greasy (ohhh, but scrumptious) plate of eggs benedict I was served.

The last official event of the weekend was a house party at the organizer’s loft just on the other side of Canal from the French Quarter. To get there we had to steel ourselves to bravely face a Bourbon Street that was wall to wall with Saints fans, the aforementioned men in dresses and the ceaseless shouts of “Who dat?!”, the two word affirmation derived from the chant that began this post (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Dat%3F). Striking me as annoying at first, the phrase became alarmingly endearing in just three days time. Anyway, back to bravely barging through this crowd of fanatics: this lasted a block or so before we remembered that there were other streets besides Bourbon and we took a parallel route to our destination. Not very epic, I know.

The house party was just that, a party in a house. Nice times, nice people, nice barbeque (sadly, I do not recall what fine establishment it was brought from). We bid farewell to many people at this event, but the saddest of all was saying goodbye to the bartender who had served the group so well. Oh, scarecrow, I think I’ll miss you most of all. Sniff.

The sun was out and temps were rocketing (into the 50s – a vast improvement), so we ambled through the more clean cut touristy parts of the Quarter, following the banks of the mighty Miss’ and into the Jackson Square vicinity.

That thar’ is the river:

And a riverboat…

And a riverboat queen…

Oh, don’t rush to his defense. Even he’s laughing at that one. Right, Mike? Mike? Uh oh…

Mike did an admirable job playing tour guide, leading a rag tag group of us site to site. We did not consider it a problem that he had neither visited New Orleans before nor was particularly well read on the city. He just looked so in command of the situation…

Now on to the public art portion of our walk – an installation called “Old Man River” – please take a moment and read the inscription at its base, first:

And now, the piece itself:

Mm hm. Mm hm. So…I dare say he’s “empty-handed” because HE HAS NO HANDS! And we can all see he’s a man with a past – worse than crabs, he clearly has a nasty case of river-barnacle crotch.

Yes, the doctor is in, and that is most certainly river-barnacle crotch. Oh, but hey, I see you’ve been working on your abs!

Onward, onward…loving this building: I’ve decided that personal success will have been achieved when I have myself a rooftop palm tree garden:

Have I mentioned that they reaaaaally like their team?

 

More structural loveliness…

 

And then we were delivered upon the historic Jackson Square & Saint Louis Cathedral…

Jackson Square is the historical epicenter of the city, with all three structures in the top picture built or partially built by the late 1700s. The sculpture is of Andrew Jackson and this picture adds to what I guess has become an unintentional collection of dude-on-horse sculpture photos (see Boston and Richmond blogs).

But, as always with me, even architectural splendor must soon give way to culinary delights. And so we found ourselves at the French Market, home of Cafe du Monde and their famous beignets.

What is a beignet? (I just said they were famous – you’re making me look ill-informed) My friends, these are beignets:

 

It is exactly what it looks like: fried dough and powdered sugar. As you might expect, they are delectable.

Okay, back to structural splendor for a few:

We wrapped up our tour shortly after, with one evening left in town. In lazy fashion, I’m going to sum up the rest of our excursions in short, digestible (like a beignet) bits:

Dinner @ Felix’s. Pro: I am not a fan of oysters, and yet I stole more than one delicious char-grilled oyster off of Brandon’s plate. Con: all of the ambiance of a junior high cafeteria.

Post-dinner drinks at the Carousel Bar in the (venerable, I am sure) Hotel Monteleone. Pro: the novelty of sitting at a rotating bar with a view of…well, nothing in particular. Con: Oh come on, you tell me Carousel Bar and I’m expecting I’ll be able to plop my butt on a horse that is jumping up and down while we rotate. I would never leave! As it was, the noted novelty wore off in about five minutes.

Post-drinks drinks at the Oz Bar. Same place we went the night before – no pros, only cons as we had to say goodbye to even more people here. Aww.

*Sleep*

Breakfast at the Clover Grill, whose motto is “We Love to Fry and it Shows”. Pro: did you read the motto?! Con: simply, you eat too much of this and it will start to show. Tasty tasties, though.

 

And that was it – shortly, we were off to the airport and en route home. I have since been on another trip to Palm Springs that was hosted by the same organization that Mike is a member of, so I got to see a lot of the new friends once more. That blog will straggle along someday, I think, but my next mission is to finish and publish the dusty, moldering Victoria blog that I began not long after we took the trip last September. Maybe I can get it posted a year to the day after we returned and pretend that it was intentional and not me being a listless sloth.

Until next time!