Thursday, I got up much earlier than I usually would on vacation (this was entirely to do with not drinking, I’m sure), and took up the spot I would every morning in New Orleans: at the patio table with my knitting and espresso from the machine in the kitchen, followed by iced coffee (and Bally, of course). I was well-caffeinated indeed.

The sun was glorious… it was still not even close to spring in Minnesota.

Matt got up a while later, and we had breakfast and headed off to be tourists. Our section of Marigny looked like this:

As we got closer to Frenchmen Street and the Quarter, the houses looked more like this:

There were several different ways to walk there, so we varied them a lot to see different things. The shortest walk from our house involved heading directly toward the river and then cutting over toward the city, because of the wedge-shaped neighborhood.

Our first stop was the French Market. Going on a Thursday morning was a good choice, because it wasn’t terribly crowded.

I bought a heart-shaped wall ornament from a guy selling milagros, Matt got a sweet tea, and we picked up a bunch of hot sauce for his dad. We wandered around the crafty booths at the market, and then headed down the riverfront. Near the Jax building, we stopped for burritos at Felipe’s Taqueria, which was like a really good version of Chipotle.

We made it all the way down to the Riverwalk area past the aquarium, and figured we’d go walk through there. (Cruise ports are always weird and interesting, and there was a ship docked there that day.) There was construction all over the place, though, so it took us a while to figure out how to even get in there. We finally did, and discovered that there were a couple empty restaurants open, but the mall area itself was totally closed for renovation.

We headed across the street to Harrah’s instead. The air conditioning was a welcome relief after walking that far in the humidity, so we decided to sit and play some video poker for a while, which had the added bonus of getting Matt free beer.

After that, we walked up Canal Street toward Bourbon Street, following a trio of juggalos. I really wanted to take a photo of them, but sadly failed. We wandered around there, then went down to Royal Street and did some shopping in the many cute stores there. We tried to get into Arnaud’s French 75, but it wasn’t open til later. Then we tried the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone, but that was full. (It’s been my life goal to sit at that bar since I’ve known about it, and whenever we go in there it’s totally full.) From there, we walked over to Jackson Square to see the cathedral.

There was a band playing at Maison Bourbon at 4pm, so we had a bit of time to kill before then. We stopped into a voodoo shop, then went over to get a drink at Pat O’Brien’s. We headed directly to the back bar, knowing that the drinks there were cheapest (I’m not entirely sure why they do that, but it’s awesome). I was excited to see they had an N/A cocktail menu, and ordered something called a Cool Breeze, made with cranberry, pineapple juice, and soda. It was delicious, and even came in a souvenir glass we actually wanted to keep. I rinsed it out in the bathroom before we left.

We crossed the street to Maison Bourbon, where the band was setting up. We were pretty much the only people there at that point, so we got seats at the corner of the bar backing up to Bourbon Street.

There was a trough of horrifying-looking water beneath the entire bar, and the place smelled a lot like trash. (Granted, a lot of the French Quarter smells that way, due to the trash cans that sit out on all the sidewalks. Space is kind of limited there.) I had to be careful to not drop my flipflops and get a horrible disease.

We watched the Swamp Donkeys‘ first set, which was pretty entertaining. I did a lot of staring at the activity on Bourbon Street, too, because by 4:30pm it was starting to get a little ridiculous.

We were getting hungry, so we decided to go get our first po-boy of the trip. On the way, we passed Chris Owens, otherwise known as “the bar where we saw a rat running across the dance floor late one night.” We also saw a guy clutching a hand grenade, seemingly unable to stand up. His friend was trying to help him stand.

Don’t go changing, New Orleans.

Killer Poboys is located in the back of a bar right off Bourbon Street called Erin Rose. It’s a friendly little place, and the owners are basically geniuses for having such a restaurant in the building. We ordered at the windows, then grabbed seats along the wall near the jukebox. Matt got a beer and queued up some music, and I watched the super-drunk bros at the bar, glad for their sakes they were eating gigantic sandwiches.

Our po-boys arrived shortly. Mine was roasted sweet potato, braised greens, and a pecan/black-eyed-pea spread. It was AMAZING, and I confess that I still have fantasies about it. Matt had rum-glazed pork belly (they warned him about it being too good), and we split some jalapeno Zapps, too.

Post-poboys, we decided to walk back to the house for an early-evening hot tub break. We took Dauphine Street, which was really quiet despite only being a block off Bourbon, which by that time was swinging into full shitshow mode.

Have I mentioned that I really loved walking through the neighborhood? There’s so much to see, and people like to hang out on their stoops that time of day. You really don’t see that much in the northland.

We sat in the hot tub for a long time, then showered and got dressed again. We headed out in the same direction as the previous night, crossing the tracks into Bywater. Our dinner choice this evening was Maurepas Foods, a friendly little restaurant that seemed even more neighborhood-oriented than Oxalis.

Matt was very excited by their excellent cocktail list, which included a Malort drink (Chicago shoutout!). We ordered fried breaded cauliflower, stewed greens with broad beans and oatmeal gnocchi, and a strawberry and creme fraiche salad. (The oatmeal gnocchi was the best by far.) After dinner, we kept on going down Burgundy (NOLA pronunciation: bur-GUN-dy), almost all the way to the river. (Hence the name ‘Bywater’.) There, a block before the street ended, we found Vaughan’s Lounge, which is famous for Kermit Ruffins’ until-recently weekly sets.

We went in, paid the $10 cover, and found seats at the bar. The place wasn’t too crowded yet, but the band (Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet) was already in full swing, and people were dancing. It was clear that it was mostly locals there, which made us happy.

Matt ordered drinks, and we watched the band. I actually watched the people most, because they were fascinating. My favorite was an old guy sitting by himself at a tiny table on the dance floor, flagging down every woman who made eye contact with him, no matter what their age. It was hilarious.

The band was amazing, and loud – the place was small, but that wasn’t the only factor. They played a long set, until about 11:30pm, and then took a break. At that point, everyone headed to the back of the bar, because they were serving free red beans and rice. A lady even walked along the bar, informing everyone that they needed to go get their free red beans and rice. So awesome.

I was sleepy (that’s the downside to not drinking – you don’t have staying-up-late superpowers), so we decided to head back to the house. Matt ran to the bathroom before we left, and came back fuming because a dude had actually broken the latch on the door trying to barge in. (I guess he really had to go?)

We were apparently supposed to be scared to walk the streets of Bywater and Marigny at night, but I couldn’t think of a single reason why, unless it was the giant cockroaches you’d sometimes scare up on the sidewalk. (They were pretty gross, but still.) Once we got to the train tracks, Matt made me hold his drink so he could fulfill a lifelong dream:

Don’t tell his parents.

I got up a little earlier than usual, since we had to check out of our awesome VRBO house by 10am. We did our usual toast and massive-amounts-of-iced-coffee breakfast, and then packed up and took everything out to the car. Steve and Colleen were staying another night, and had a room at the Hotel Monteleone. They chose it because of the rooftop pool for their daughter, not because of the awesome rotating bar.

The view wasn’t too bad, either:

We left the car with the valet and headed down toward the riverfront to get breakfast. We got a table at the French Market Cafe, where I discovered that not a single item on the menu was vegetarian. Thankfully, they still had their breakfast buffet running, and it had one of the best biscuits I’d ever had. So I was happy.

After breakfast, we went to the French Market again, since they hadn’t seen it yet. I found a couple really cute prints of a shrimp and crab to take home for our kitchen, and Colleen got a voodoo doll. Not the kind you stab with pins, but one to make you happy when you feel sad. Who knew?

From there, we walked back into the Quarter and down Royal Street to do some shopping. We stopped into a few art galleries and some some really fantastic (and way too expensive) stuff. We also discovered that the haunted or unhaunted nature of property in the French Quarter seems to be a big selling point. I’m not sure if haunting makes it more or less expensive, though.

I was really thirsty (it was way hotter than usual), so Matt and I went into Pat O’Briens to get drinks for everyone (since they couldn’t take their daughter inside). The guys got juleps, and Colleen and I had Cool Breezes again. They were delicious!

Matt and I wanted to go see Armstrong Park before we left, and were shopped-out, so we headed that way while they went back to the hotel for a nap. It was only about six blocks away, but it felt like a lot in the heat, and after having walked so many miles already.

We hung out on a bench in the shade in Congo Square for a while, then went to see the Louis Armstrong trophy and the lakes in the rest of the park. I didn’t know the place was so big!

We headed back to the French Quarter, texting Steve that we’d be at Kingfish, the cocktail bar we’d wanted to go to a few days earlier. He said he’d meet us there. We grabbed seats at the bar, which had a gigantic photo of Huey Long at the opposite end. There were a few people there that may have been there for days at that point. They were in a pretty entertaining state.

The bartender was awesome. She made me an N/A drink with ginger beer and her own homemade bitters, and all the drinks involved crushed ice made the old-fashioned way, with a huge mallet and canvas bag. (Every time she had to make ice, everyone stopped to watch.) She told us her boyfriend was actually playing at a bar in Minneapolis that weekend (a show I later found out one of our friends had attended). Steve joined us, and we ordered a few appetizers – fries with bleu cheese, three kinds of cracklins, and BBQ shrimp on a waffle.

After a while, I wanted to go back over to Bourbon Street for some people-watching, so we went to Lafitte’s Old Absinthe House. The older lady working behind the bar was crabby as hell, but at least she didn’t charge me for my multiple Diet Coke refills. I bought Matt and Steve shots of Fireball (we’d been discussing them at the previous place), and they decided to have absinthe, too, since Steve hadn’t experienced the drip yet. I texted Colleen what was going on, and she was a little bit apprehensive. If I couldn’t drink, though, they were going to have to cover my portion as well.

Then it was time to head to the airport, sadly. We walked back to the hotel, got the car from the valet, and they drove us to the airport. Our flight was delayed a little, til 6:30, but it was otherwise uneventful and we were home by 11pm (after taking the train downtown to get the car). Not bringing a change of clothes for the cold was definitely not the smartest thing we’ve ever done!

I got up even earlier than usual on Saturday, got dressed, and wandered downstairs with the intention of going around the corner to hang out at the coffee shop until Heather and Jay were ready to go. However, it was raining, and after a long chat with one of the owners about her profound lack of interest in the resident spirits, I decided to lurk around the Castle Inn and have breakfast. I started poking around the buffet, which consisted of mostly prepackaged food in a less-than-appetizing presentation: sliced cinnamon and raisin bread next to an old toaster, crusty glazed donuts, packets of grits and cold cereal, pop-tarts removed from their wrappers and arranged on a plate, anemic-looking fruit. I was about to fill my coffee mug (which I had already designated as my ‘usual’ after two days: it’s the orange one with the pumpkin face on it, in case you’re ever visiting), when the man I had been trying to avoid came barrelling out of the kitchen to admonish me. Breakfast didn’t start until 8am.

Chastized by a crazy man, I went out to the sunporch and read a book that was titled something like “Ghost-hunting for Dummies”. Then I paged through a book about psychic phenomena that was published in the 50s, and found it highly informative in a this-is-a-giant-load-of-crap sort of way. I went into the office and checked my email, verifying that my company was indeed still in business even though I was out of town. Once it was safely past 8am, I went back for my coffee, and sat down on a couch in the main room, clutching my pumpkin mug and a brown banana.

I was paging through a fascinating book about the history of the Garden District when a guy walked in, got coffee, and took a seat across the room, facing me. He sat there silently for ten or fifteen minutes, during which time I was convinced he was fixing me with his serial-killer gaze, so I was afraid to look up. I clung to the pumpkin for support. Finally, he asked me how late I had been ‘down there’ the night before. I told him we didn’t go near Bourbon Street, on account of the NCAA tournament and the hoardes of reckless fratboys. He described their night, spent pushing through drunk guys on the street, and their return to the hotel at around 3am. He said he was an amateur ghost-hunter, so he had taken out his digital camera and started snapping pictures randomly, hoping to catch some haunting activity. And he had.

Ron went upstairs for his camera, and sat and showed me all his photos. They were interesting, definitely. A lot of it could have been explained away as tricks of light and the flash, but some of it was pretty intriguing. He pointed out outlines of ghosts, even the little girl known as Emily. He was convinced. I was skeptical. I gave him my email address, hoping he’d send the photos.

After half an hour or so, I gracefully extricated myself and went upstairs. Heather and I decided to take the streetcar into the French Quarter (or the ‘Freedom Quarter’, for you dumbass patriots). Jay would drive over and meet us for tofu rancheros at the awesome vegetarian place we had discovered. It was in the mid-80s that morning, but the humidity made it stifling. Heather and I walked from one side of the French Quarter to the other, stopping in the tacky souvenir shops to pick up voodoo dolls and the like. We were a little early for brunch, so we stopped for coffee at a cafe on Decatur (not Cafe Du Monde, which was overrun with hung-over fratboys), and sat there listening to the jazz band and people-watching.

We had brunch, then headed back to the other side of the French Quarter to the Aquarium. I saw what I had come to see: jellyfish. I even witnessed jellyfish sex, even though Heather swore that they didn’t reproduce that way. But I know what I saw: dirty, raunchy jellyfish lovin’. It was hot.

We left the aquarium and once again headed back across the French Quarter. It’s only something like 13 blocks wide, but it seemed like a lot, having walked it a couple times already in the drenching humidity. We stopped at the French Market to buy fresh fruit for the trip back the next day, then walked back to the car. A huge storm was rolling in from the Gulf, and it started to pour a few minutes after we reached the car. At that point, I announced that I was officially tired. It had been a long trip.

We went back to the hotel and rested while it stormed. Later, we drove up to the fair suburb of Metairie, to the International Market, and dinner at an indian restaurant. The Taj Mahal was no less than the happiest restaurant on earth, and it was the perfect way to spend some of our last few hours in the south.