"Home of pirates, drunks, and whores..."

Mary Beth and I headed out Saturday morning. We got into New Orleans in the afternoon. We did some stuff. Dang, can I remember those days ago? We first tried to go to this museum that's in the CBD (what most cities would call "downtown," henceforth referred to here as "downtown"). In was in this lame shopping mall where the cruise ships land, but it was closed. Traffic getting in was pretty crazy. Parking, also, was a chore. Later we heard people around town talking about how crazy-busy and crowded everything was this week. I guess spring break hit New Orleans pretty hard. After that we went and hit some bars and a restaurant around the town. We ate a lot of food this trip, lots of good stuff.

In the morning we met Mary Beth's friend Karin and her boyfriend Paul for a little breakfast thingie at Cafe du Monde (a NO staple that sells nothing but coffee (more or less) to drink and beignets to eat. It was windy this morning and powdered sugar was blowing everywhere. Paul went off to work on his midterm and the rest of us went wandering around the French Quarter. We definitely went to Arcadian Books and I picked up a few: Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov, Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, and Our Friends from Frolix 8 by Philip K. Dick (I'd been casually looking for the Murakami since I borrowed and read it eight or so years ago). We stopped in a few antique stores including one with an interestingly large supply of racist items of many varieties. At one point we stopped at a random place and had a break/drink/eat. I had alligator for the first time. Actually, the place was pretty good considering how touristy it looked. We parted ways with Karin and ended up eating some good gumbo and cajun stuff at Coop's. I'm sure we also hit some bars.

Monday morning we had breakfast at this really good breakfasty place whose name I forget. Among other things, they had prailine bacon. Then we ventured back downtown to check out the WWII Museum. It was pretty good. It had a heavy D-Day focus (I believe it started off as the D-Day Museum and was later expanded). Then we had our fancy lunch at this place called The Captain's Palace. It was old-school 50s fancy. I had to dress up in the car. The food was actually pretty good. I think after this was when we checked out the southern art museum. I wasn't necessarily expecting much either way, but it turned out to have a nice bit of good stuff (especially the abstract section on the top floor). In the evening we took the ferry across the river. There wasn't much over there, but it was worth the ferry ride alone. The ferry and its stations represent a wonderful 70s infrastructure that's in a bit of a decay. Lots of concrete and bigness and what seems like it once had much activity and maintenance and supervision and not so much now. I was fond of it. Anyway, I'll continue in another post.

More Orleans

Now we're up to Tuesday, more or less. By this time I'm getting pretty dern familiar with the city and getting around and stuff. That was pretty cool. We had breakfast out at this awesome diner. Then we hi the Quarter for some shopping and etcetera. Librarie Books was first (it was my least favorite bookstore of the trip, it was okay, but...): Europe Central by William T. Vollmann and Fable by Robert Pinget. Next we hit Skully'z Recordz. In spite of its being on Bourbon St., it was actually a really sweet record store. It wasn't seeming promising at first but then started turning out kinda awesome (like Arcadian the other day). I got: Brian Eno: The BBC Sessions, Chris Carter: The Space Between, and Oneohtrix Point Never: Rifts. The Eno's a bootleg cdr that has only one BBC Session...plus two live tracks and two outtakes from Tiger Mountain. We tried to hit Dauphine St. Books but it was closed. Crescent City Books was my other favorite used bookstore. I got: The Celebration by Ivan Ângelo, Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara, Degrees by Michel Butor, Cleaned Out by Annie Ernaux, The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell, Where the Air Is Clear by Carlos Fuentes, Einar by Elfriede Jelinek, Infante's Inferno by G. Cabrera Infante, and Stranded by Esther Tusquets. All but two were Dalkey Archive shit. The guy ringing me up (most likely the owner since he mentioned books that were delivered to his house instead of the store) talked to me about Dalkey Archive and that was cool. Oh yeah, and the guy from the record store talked to me about the Chris Carter being awesome and the Oneohtrix Point Never too. We also went to this record store called Peaches but it was lame and I didn't get nothin'. Hm. In the middle of all that, after the first record store, we went to the Pharmacy Museum for its last half hour before close. That was pretty neat. It's not huge, so it was a good way to spend a section of our minutes. More eating and more bars and stuff.

Now we're up to yesterday. We met Karin and Paul at this place for breakfast in the Quarter (they were all dressed nice and we were bummin' it up, oh we met them for dessert the night before and it was the same. I had to zip up my jacket to pretend I wasn't just wearing a t-shirt to this fancy restaurant). We checked out this one nearby history museum for a little bit but then had to book it 'cuz we had reservations on a cemetery tour. It was pretty fine. we walked around a few places and ended up at New Orleans's oldest cemetery. I even got to see The Tomb of Nicholas Cage (the tour guide said she hates even pointing it out but people complain if she doesn't). Afterwards Mary Beth and I went to NOMO (New Olreans Museum of Art). It was the type of museum I'd expected, but its contents exceeded my expectations. Lots of good modern, impressionist, and postmodern stuff. The "world" art was really good too. Maybe I'll go into detail about some of the paintings I loved there later. I picked up the New Orleans Museum of Art Handbook. It was also in the middle of this gorgeous park and the weather was awesome so when we left we hung out and walked about the park for a bit. The weather was pretty good the whole trip. If anything, it erred on the cold side (especially a few days). But the heat and humidity definitely hasn't set in yet. More dinner and bars and we bookended our trip by ended our last full day where our first full day began: at Cafe du Monde. It wasn't crowded (I neglected to mention the crazy line to get in the first time) and it wasn't as windy, but the entire floor was still coated in powdered sugar.

We hit a few places this morning before we set out. More good breakfast and we even picked up some fried chicken to take back with us. It was a good trip. I definitely liked New Orleans more than I have in the past. I guess I did get to see and do more than before. Also the time of year was much better weather-wise. It was definitely a good use most of my spring break too. Karin and Paul were fun to be around as well. Oh, and New Orleans being New Orleans, I got to hear all the updates about the selection of the new pope by overhearing random conversations yesterday. Then there's the tour guide we happened to see every day (two days giving tours and one day just wandering about in his spare time). The first time we saw him at Commander's Palace (wait, last time I said "captain's" not sure which it is), he was at this table with two couples and I thought he was some pompous know-it-all blowhard who wouldn't shut up talking to his friends and showing off how much he knew about crap. Then I was kinda, oh duh, when I realized he was a tour guide. It was a weird place for a tour guide to be eating lunch with his tour though. Any more random bits to fill in? If I think of 'em I'll throw 'em in later. I came back to a package of six contact mics in the mail. Hm...