Yes NO

Our second spring break trip to New Orleans was much fun. Got up pretty early Tuesday morning and made it out. The drive down was pretty uneventful, made good time and were there in the early afternoon. We had lunch as we got into the outter parts of the city at Drago's and it was really good. The charbroiled oysters and shrimp and grits were excellent. When we got into town-town we hit the Quarter straight away to do some stuff. First we went to the New Orleans Historic Collection (a free museum that has a bunch of...historic stuff!). The most fun there was looking at the old maps. After that we hit a few places. Dauphine Street Books where I picked up a couple: A Way of Life, like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien and Beloved by Toni Morrison (have it already yes, but this was a first edition hardback I couldn't pass up for cheap...or maybe not first? anyway, it's the original hardback if not the very first run). Okay, then to my biggest joy in coming: Skully'z (the tiny yet awesome record store on Bourbon St.). I picked up: Beak>>: s/t, Crispy Ambulance: The Plateau Phase, Deafheaven: Sunbather. The Soft Moon: s/t, and Tangerine Dream: Optical Race (the last one could be a terrible risk, I had heard one song from it online once that I recall being good...we'll see). More hanging around and walking around the Quarter. We went to Bar Tonique (a bar Mary Beth liked from the last time) and then had dinner at Coop's, which was as good as before. Oh, before that, we were wandering around in the Louis Armstrong park and ended up getting closed inside the gate. There were still quite a few other people in there too so we weren't TOO worried. We walked around finding no way out until we saw a guy come in through a hole cut out in a gate in the back parking lot so we took that for an exit and had a little nighttime stroll through Treme back to the Quarter. We finished with beignets at Cafe du Monde. Pretty eventful for the day we'd arrived in town.

The next morning we had to wake up early 'cuz we had some reservations. We started with breakfast at Elizabeth's, which had good food again. Then we went to the Degas House where we had reservations for our guided tour. It was pretty interesting, more history than art (as they can't afford to get any of his actual works aside from a few little sketches). But the history of the house is awesome and I didn't know his brief stay in New Orleans was the only time one of the capital F. I. French Impressionists visited the country. The woman who gave the tour was also his brother's great-granddaughter (I think). Does that make her his great-grand-niece? Is that a thing? Afterwards we had lunch at...hehehehe...Dooky Chase. It was buffet and really good stuff. Then we were going to go to the African American Museum, but that was closed (the first of a few such upsets on our trip). It was scheduled to reopen in fall of 2013...well, it was closed anyway. We spent the rest of the time back in the Quarter. We hit a few more bookstores (mostly ones we went to last year plus a cookbook store Mary Beth wanted to see). We hung out down by the river then went to the business district to the Sazerac bar (in the Roosevelt Hotel with its lovely art deco decor). Then we had dinner at Cochon Butcher. Then finished at Loa. Well, we finished finished back at Cafe du Monde again.

Yesterday we got up at a more leisurely pace, which was nice to catch up on some needed sleep. We made our way more westward and had breakfast at Slim Goodies (another repeat from last year). Oh, the whole day was a little annoying as I tried to play the where-can-I-charge-my-phone? game as we went around. The outlet I had plugged it into the night before was apparently connected with the light switch so most of the time I thought it WAS being charged that night...it WASN'T. I did pretty well in squeezing some time in some places throughout the day as it lasted the whole time. But it was pretty touch and go here and there. Okay, then we tried to get to this museum at Tulane. Finding a place to park and even just finding where the damn building was was a huge undertaking. After aimless confused wandering, we eventually found it. Then we get there and the damn gallery's closed for rennovation or whatever (just like the African American Museum the day before). A guy walking by (student, presumably) informed us of this but let us know about an exhibit that was open upstairs. That was good, though it did take us a little bit of searching to find it. This was a smaller exhibit, one artist three rooms. It was a multimedia thing. I was freaked out a little at first because we walked into a pitch black room. The fist and biggest room had four projectors, one on each wall, and four speakers, again one on each wall. There were abstract shapes with operatic music playing. I wasn't terribly into this room at first. There were two smaller rooms off of this room. The next one we went to had moving lights from the ceiling with a bunch of circles that moved together and apart and around. There were angled mirrors in the middle so that every now and then they'd meet up and shine reflections on the walls. A fog machine spit out fog now and then to make the lights more visible. I really liked this room. The circles moved together and apart slowly. The progression we picked was wonderful because each one was better than the previous. The last room was my favorite. It had a bunch of little speakers hanging from the ceiling with a light attached. I just saw the lights at first and didn't notice they were speakers until Mary Beth said something about it to me. They blended with the music from the first room, but they were creating more simple tones. The sounds would come in and out and the lights would come on when each speaker was playing. You could walk around them and experience the sound differently depending on where you were standing. The effect was wonderful and even made me appreciate the first room more. I liked how the two smaller rooms were more abstract/concentrated distillations of the ideas going on in the first room. Oh, and there was another set of images in the first room I saw later that I liked more anyway. What I first saw were mostly spots of colors, but later there were these arcs of color that looked pretty awesome. Anyway, it was a great exhibit we might not have even noticed had we gone to the normal gallary. Okay, there was some driving back and forth at this point. A bookstore in the garden district. Back to the Quarter for late lunch at Green Goddess (where the food was bat-shit-ass-crazy good, that bacon sunday, jesus). Back to the garden district to another bookstore. A couple record stores back on the other side of town that weren't that great. Twelve Mile Limit, a bar in its own part of town we had gone to last year. Again the barbecue sliders were great. Back to Bywater to a few more places (a staggered, little bit here/little bit there, sort of dinner). We had tacos at this place called Suis Generis that I loved. A repeat visit to Maurepas for some little dishes. We'd only had a couple little things, but it added up and we were stuffed. We decided against more beignets and headed back to the hotel.

So we're to today's morning. We had breakfast at a new place called Cake Cafe (it was awesome, we also picked up some patries that we ate on the way home). This morning we did make time for Cafe du Monde, although since it's busier in the daytime we took our beignets to go (which there was still a good sized line for that). Okay, hit the road. The drive home was pretty uneventful. Made good time. Did get a little crack on the windshield (again, happened coming back last year too, this time it was much smaller, gonna get it fixed tomorrow). Picked up some Five Guys after we got home. Then the dishwasher broke and started flooding. So had to toss it out and do some cleaning in the kitchen. Well, now just enjoying spring break home time.