Matt came to meet me downtown, and we took the train to the airport for our flight. TSA Pre-Check was fast as always, and we were on our flight in no time. It was a tiny plane, too, one of those with 2×2 seats and maybe 40 passengers. The previous passenger was apparently a spine doctor from Montana, and he was kind enough to leave behind some fascinating reading material.

It was a very fast flight, and we arrived almost half an hour early, around 4:45. We had to stand in the taxi line and then wait in traffic for a while, but we were still at our destination by 5:30. It was a house we’d rented off VRBO in Marigny very close to Bywater, and it was gorgeous.

According to the listing, the shotgun-shack-style house had been featured on a remodeling show, and it showed. The owners were in New York half of the time, so the (really excellent) artwork was all NYC or New Orleans-themed. Everything was very nice, especially the kitchen.

Plus there was a hot tub on the patio, which was one of the main reasons we’d rented the place. It would feature prominently in our plans every day.

We settled in, then walked around the corner to the convenience store, Hank’s. It was a horrendous dive of a place, with far more liquor and smoking-related products than food, but it had everything we needed: local snacks, beer, bread for making toast in the morning, milk, and my new discovery, N.O. Brew iced coffee.

We hung out on our patio drinking iced coffee (me, since I couldn’t drink) and Abita Amber (Matt), and then decided to head over to dinner. We decided on Oxalis, which was less than a mile from our house.

Walking through the neighborhood was fantastic. It was so much nicer being in an actual residential area, than a hotel over in the business district near the French Quarter. It meant we’d have to take transit or walk farther to get to the touristy stuff, but it was worth it. There was a ton to see in our neighborhood, too.

We got a table on the patio at Oxalis, and ordered the cheese plate and bruschetta. Then Matt ordered mussels and frites, and I had a really excellent beet salad. The manager came out and talked for a while, and she knew a lot about Minneapolis. Plus her main references for it were 1) liberals and 2) Prince, so we liked her a lot for it.

From dinner, we walked back the other direction past our house to Frenchmen Street, home of some of the best jazz clubs. We were a bit early for the show at Snug Harbor, so we bought tickets and hung out in the bar for a while. It was pretty quiet there, but started to fill up before the 10pm show.

The doors opened, and we went upstairs and found a table on the railing overlooking the band. It was Delfeayo Marsalis and a really large band that completely filled the stage. They were really entertaining, and invited one of Trombone Shorty’s cousins up on stage to play along for a couple songs.

The most interesting part of the night was when an old lady right up front had obviously recorded one of their pieces on her phone (which was against the rules, obviously), and decided to play it back immediately afterwards. Delfeayo told her “we can’t complete with ourselves!” and tried to joke it off, but it was totally awkward because she just kept playing it and laughing. Finally a lady nearby had to shoosh her. SO WEIRD.

Toward the end of the show, the entire back of the balcony emptied out as a tour group of old people headed to their bus. We walked out shortly afterward, and saw a huge tour bus blocking Frenchmen Street with all of them piling on. We walked the half-mile or so back to our house, and headed to our very comfortable bed.

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, had my usual toast and tons of coffee on the patio, and then we prepared to head out. Our first stop was the knitting store a couple blocks away, because I’d been unprepared to get so much knitting done on the trip, and needed more needles. The little old lady running the place was adorable, and I never thought I’d ever have need to hold such a prolonged conversation about the upsides and downsides of various circular needles.

It was way more humid than the previous days, and was raining a little on and off, so we carried umbrellas along. We walked down to Frenchmen Street, and met a lazy cat along the way.

We were in search of coffee and beignets, but the line at Cafe du Monde was really long. We walked a couple blocks further and stopped into the place in the Jax Brewery building, where they served us (really excellent) iced coffee and beignets right away.

Post-beignets, I told Matt we should try stopping into the Carousel Bar again, since we had to go near there anyway and it had just opened for the day. I figured that way, we stood the best chance of actually being able to sit at the bar. And I was right!! There were a couple of seats open, so we took them. I just had a water, which I’m sure the bartenders didn’t love, but whatever. Matt had a Vieux Carre, because it was invented there.

We hung out for a couple rotations, eating their snacks and watching the other patrons, most of who were obviously staying at the hotel (trust me, you can tell). We learned that there’s no door for the bartenders to leave, so they have to CLIMB OVER the bar when there’s a seat open. I felt bad for the older guy working back there. It looked tricky.

From there we walked over to Canal Street and hopped on the trolley to the Garden District (activating our transit passes for the first time). For reasons that were never fully explained, the trolley stopped halfway there and we had to all pile off and get on a bus instead. The majority of us got off the same bus at Washington, and walked over to Lafayette Cemetery #1. (Apparently there was a tour starting right then, but we chose to look around on our own.)

The overcast and occasional raindrops seemed appropriate for the scene.

After circling the cemetery for a while, we stopped to admire Commander’s Palace before we headed onward. (Matt wanted to go, but they have dress codes!)

We walked down to Magazine Street, heading toward the shopping districts. I was already pretty tired of walking, especially considering my hip and knee issue was acting up. We stopped into a shop to pick up some more souvenirs, and then Matt looked up one of our chosen lunch destinations on the map. It said it was less than a mile away, so we decided to walk it anyway.

After walking what felt more like 10 miles, we still weren’t even close. But we kept onward, because we knew it was there somewhere. I was pretty miserable, because my hip was starting to feel weak, which meant some awesome limping and sort-of-dragging it along. Not awesome.

FINALLY, we got to McClure’s BBQ. (It ended up being 1.7 miles. Thanks, Google Maps!) I was more excited about the possibility of sitting down in air conditioning than I was about the food. Until the food arrived.

Matt had three meats, mac and cheese, and greens. I had an amazing smoked mushroom sandwich, cole slaw, and cornbread. It was fantastic, and they had a huge rack of various barbecue sauces to try.

After lunch, we decided to be smart and ride the bus back instead. Conveniently, there was a stop directly in front of the restaurant, and it showed up right away. We rode back to the business district, and hopped off near Lee Circle. Our destination was a cocktail bar called Bellocq, at the Hotel Modern.

Google said they opened at 3pm, but the door was locked. Someone opened it right away, though, and said that they were just getting ready and would open at 4. We waited in the courtyard, since it was 3:55. We ended up being the only people there for the entire time, but that was fine. The bartenders were awesome, and full of good information.

Their specialty was cobblers, lower-proof cocktails usually made with some kind of wine. Matt had a madeira sour and a Lillet cobbler, and the bartender made me an awesome gingery non-alcoholic drink.

We hung out there for a while, then decided to go back to the house for some hot tub time before dinner. Google Maps said there was a bus arriving about 6 blocks away in 10 minutes, so we went over there and sat at the bus stop. After a while it became clear that the bus wasn’t coming, so I checked the schedule again and we’d have to sit there forever for another one. I went with Google’s next recommendation, so we walked another 8 blocks to a different bus stop, just in time to see the bus we wanted pulling away. AAGH. (My hip and knee were ready to be amputated at that point, too.) Finally, we found one arriving in a couple minutes, figured out where to wait, and it actually showed up. Conveniently, that one dropped off only a block from the house, too.

We stopped into Hank’s for more diet pineapple pop (my favorite!), snacks, and iced coffee, and then went to the house and climbed in the hot tub. After a half-hour or so it started raining a little, so we got out and went to shower. While I was drying off I realized that it was pouring like crazy, so I hoped that would let up in time for us to leave again. It kept up for 20 minutes or so, and then tapered off to a light drizzle. We put our shoes on, grabbed our umbrellas, and headed out to walk to dinner at 13, about 3/4 mile away.

We got a block down the street before it started pouring again. Two blocks down, it was pouring twice as hard. We’d never even experienced rain like that, and it was coming in at such an angle that our pants were getting totally soaked no matter what we did. Three blocks down, we found a tiny overhang to huddle under while we waited to see if it would let up. It showed zero sign of doing so, though, and we decided to just go back to the house.

We turned around so that our fronts could get soaked, too (at least we were even). (When your underwear get drenched in a rainstorm even though you’re carrying an umbrella, it’s time to give up.) I clutched my purse under my arm like a football so my electronics didn’t get wet. And Bally! He’s absorbent, after all.

Back at the house, we called 13 to order delivery po-boys. They said they weren’t delivering that night (I wouldn’t want to, either), so we found a place called Love Lost Lounge instead. They were kind enough to deliver us some very delicious banh mi an hour later. The rain still hadn’t let up, either, so the satellite TV didn’t work. Which was fine, because we wanted to watch the Stanley Cup playoffs (Minnesota Wild vs the Blackhawks) and they didn’t get it there anyway. So we propped up our phones on the table, and watched the game that way instead. Internet to the rescue!

Shortly after the end of the game, our phones started blaring that horrible sound they play during severe weather alerts on TV. Neither of us knew our phones had that feature, so it was kind of a surprise. What was even more of a surprise, though, was when they started doing that in unison while we were asleep at 2am. We survived the flash floods in New Orleans, thankfully!

By Saturday morning, the rain had stopped. I wiped down the patio furniture and started a load of towels in the laundry, since we’d used all of them cleaning up from the downpour. I discovered a monster blister on my foot, too, which explained a lot of my walking distress the previous day.

We had breakfast, then walked down to the French Market RTA stop to get on the trolley. The trolleys that run on the riverfront seem to be in no damn hurry at all; we sat there forever before leaving.

We took the trolley to the end of the line (near the cruise port and convention center) and headed up Julia Street to find our lunch destination, Cafe Carmo. We ordered at the counter, and went outside to get a table on the sidewalk. Matt got a cocktail, and I had my coconut water delivered directly in the coconut. Awesome.

We had an order of gougeres that were amazing, and I had an open-face fake-meat ‘sandwich’ on plantains with salad. Matt had a yellowfish tuna sandwich. Everything they had there was excellent. There was a lady hanging out at the next table with her adorable English bulldog, and the dog kept trying to get to Matt for food. It was really cute.

After lunch, we walked over to the World War II Museum. (No, I don’t exactly know why New Orleans has a WWII museum – it used to be the D-Day Museum, but they do.)

The place is really large, with three or four big buildings across the street from one another. Only one of them appeared to be fully in use, though. It’s the one with most of the D-Day exhibits. It was really well-done, and appropriate for someone like me with a short attention span. I just wish they’d have had more on the atomic bomb (it was one long wall in a corner, with a couple videos), but that’s mostly because it’s one of the eras I’m nerdiest about.

We saw the exhibits in the main building, then crossed the street. There’s a big, definitely fancy restaurant in there, and a giant hangerish building sponsored by Boeing that didn’t seem to have much set up yet. The entire building in the photo above is still under construction, too.

Regardless of the construction, I liked the museum a lot, and it’s not the kind of thing I expected to find there. Plus Bally got to go in a tank!

We stopped at the cafe for a drink (and to sit down), and then decided to walk back toward the French Quarter. Why we didn’t take the bus, I’m not positive. It’s how we are.

If we’d have taken the bus, we couldn’t have experienced this amazing New Orleans wisdom, though:

We figured we had some time to kill before Steve and Colleen arrived, so we were on our way to another cocktail bar. Colleen texted that they’d landed as we reached Canal Street, so we changed our plans and decided to head back to the house right away. I looked up the bus schedule again on Google Maps, and we went to the stop to wait. While we were standing there for 10 minutes or so, it started raining again. Not quite the downpour from the previous night, but still a lot. Watching the people without umbrellas was pretty amusing.

The bus took us to Franklin, and we only had a few-block walk from there. We cleaned up and took up positions on the front stoop to wait for our friends from Seattle to arrive. It was a pretty entertaining game, asking “Is that them?” with every passing car… the passers-by were very interesting, to say the least. They finally showed up, and we went inside to hang out.

A little while later, we made our obligatory daily trip to Hank’s with Steve, where they noticed someone had spray-painted “All Hanx are Bastards” on the wall. The guy behind the counter every time we went in definitely wasn’t the friendliest, but he wasn’t exactly a bastard. We got more coffee, more milk, and all the flavors of Zapps they had to offer. Including Voodoo Zapps, which were obviously the most exciting.

We sat around on the patio for a while, then decided to walk to dinner. Our destination was 13, the place that had been unable to deliver the previous day. We walked over to Frenchmen Street, which was already in full-on party mode, and stopped at the front door because of a sign stating that no one under 18 was allowed on the premises because they had gambling machines. That meant not even Steve and Colleen’s daughter, who was riding in a stroller.

We decided on Marigny Brasserie instead, because Matt and I had had lunch there before and it was good. (Plus if I’d eaten there before, that meant there was vegetarian food.) We went in to ask about a table, and the surliest hostess ever told us it’d be about 20 minutes. That was fine, so we put our names down and grabbed chairs in the bar by the stage.

A band was setting up, and everything seemed normal until one of the guys playing pulled out the largest musical instrument I’d ever seen. He explained it was a kora from Mali. The main problem was that when he played it, it looked like he was humping a calabash the whole time. Colleen and I couldn’t look at it without laughing.

We sat there watching the band for a long time, and Colleen finally gave up and went to ask about our table. Surprise! It was ready for us. (I don’t know if they didn’t bother looking for people on the list, or what. We were just happy to be able to eat since it was after 9pm and we were all hungry.) Our server brought drinks, and the appetizers came out pretty quickly. They didn’t have a vegetarian appetizer, so I waited.

As far as we could tell, there was one server in the entire place, which was totally full at that point. She was trying to be friendly, but mostly looked harried and acted like everyone asking for things was imposing. Everyone sat with empty classes for a long time, until we managed to flag the server to ask for them. My entree was godawful, but I ate it anyway because we had waited so long (and it was the only vegetarian thing on the menu). They apologized and offered to buy me dessert (I don’t eat sugar) or a drink (I wasn’t drinking). When the check arrived, THEY HADN’T REMOVED THE ENTREE.

So, basically, this was the one place in New Orleans I’d recommend avoiding completely. We should’ve checked the reviews, because they’re also terrible.

Anyway, after dinner we walked back to the house and hung out in the hot tub, so that was awesome.

Saturday morning, I did my traditional patio-knitting til everyone got up. Once we were all assembled, we piled in the car and headed to City Park to the second-most famous coffee-and-beignet stand, Morning Call. It was raining while we drove, but let up a little in time for us to walk there and get a table.

There was a jazz band playing, and service was unbelievably quick. I think we had our beignets within 5 minutes of ordering them, right at our table. I liked the fact that you could dispense your own powdered sugar, too.

It started raining again while we sat there, with varying degrees of heaviness. Even the ducks gave up and decided to head indoors.

We waited for the rain to stop again, and walked across the street to the sculpture garden. It was dry for a bit, but really gloomy-looking.

We walked around a bit, and it started sprinkling. We all had umbrellas, though, and the stroller had a raincover, so we didn’t mind that much.

Then it started raining harder, to the point where it was hard to walk around. We kind of huddled together to get out of it.

Then it started pouring again. Matt and I took up shelter under a giant tree. The rain was coming in huge waves across the lake.

We gave up on seeing the rest of the park, and headed to the car. Of course by the time we got there, it had pretty much stopped raining.

Though we’d had breakfast less than an hour ago, it seemed like a good time for lunch. We went about a half-mile up the road to Mo-Pho. Though it was in a strip mall with a Burger King and a Subway, it was actually really nice inside. Plus they had small-batch soy sauce on the table, so of course we had to sample it.

I had a BBQ tofu po-boy (it was actually a banh mi, but who cares)? It was excellent, and so were the chips that went with it. Matt had the world’s largest bowl of pho.

Even though we were way more than full from lunch, we had to walk next door for a sno-ball. I wasn’t planning to get one until I saw that they had sugar-free flavors, and then I had to try one. The sugar-free pineapple was pretty good, despite having to ignore the warning about not eating yellow snow. Steve won the flavor contest, though: his was called Silver Fox.

We got back in the car and drove up to the southern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, because none of us had seen it before, apart from crossing the bridge toward Mississippi. I couldn’t believe how big it was (you can’t see the other side, so it might as well be the ocean). The rich-people houses butting up to the levees were pretty interesting, too.

From there, we headed back into the business district to go to Rousse’s, an actual grocery store than didn’t just have booze and Zapps. We only needed a few things, but of course ended up spending almost an hour there shopping for stuff. Steve and Matt both got t-shirts, and we got more coffee and snacks than we could possibly consume. We piled all our stuff in the car, and went back to the house for some hot tub time.

We spent about an hour in there, and then went to clean up. By the time Matt and I were ready to go, the babysitter had arrived for Steve and Colleen’s daughter. She was a kind of odd little old lady, but she seemed really nice. We said goodbye, and headed off on foot to Frenchmen Street.

Finally, we were able to go to 13 for dinner. (After trying twice, we were determined.) We got a table in the back, and Matt and Steve ordered frozen Irish coffees, which looked AMAZING. We split an order of totchos, and I had a mushroom Philly (which meant “Motown Philly” was stuck in my head forever).

After dinner, we walked over to the French Quarter. Since they had never been to New Orleans before, Matt and I had compiled an essential Bourbon Street list for them, things that you have to do no matter how stupid and touristy (and some of them are just awesome.)

The first stop on that list was Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, because it is a bar with no lights. Sure, there’s electricity for the fridges and a new flatscreen TV showing sports on the wall, but at night it’s still totally dark with only candles on the table. I love it a lot.

Right outside the bar, we encountered a giant man with a tiny, tiny horse. I almost had a stroke, I was so excited about it. I wanted to get a picture, but I’m sure I’d have had to pay for it.

After the men finished their drinks there, we walked down to Pat O’Brien’s, because everyone needs to try a hurricane there. Matt and Steve got theirs in gigantic plastic go-cups, and Colleen and I both got Cool Breezes. I won’t even be embarrassed about it, because they were seriously delicious.

From there, we wandered slowly down to the other end of Bourbon Street. Matt noted that the strip clubs had become WAY more graphic than last time we were there, because we could see some legitimately hardcore stuff from the street. It wasn’t too much of a disaster yet otherwise… I definitely didn’t see anyone falling down yet, nor was I hating everyone because I was totally sober.

Our next stop was an abrupt change: Arnaud’s French 75. I was very surprised to find it nearly empty.

We felt very fancy there, and the guys ordered the bar’s namesake cocktail. Bally got his photo taken on one of the animal-print chairs. I pondered how such a nice, historic place could be around the corner from one of the biggest potential shitshows in the country. That is exactly why New Orleans is one of my favorite cities on earth.

We had limited time with the sitter at the house, so we decided to head back that direction. Matt and I insisted upon one last drink for Steve, though: the notorious HAND GRENADE.

We headed back toward the house on Royal Street again, and Matt and Steve noticed that there were at least six different haunted New Orleans tours going on. They decided they should probably start their own tour company, just making stuff up as they went. They reasoned that if they did the tour in that Ken Burns reenactment voice, everyone would think they were legit.

When we got back to the house, the babysitter told Colleen she was worried about us walking back, because it was such a bad neighborhood. Uh, what? That was confusing. We hopped in the hot tub in our terrible, dangerous neighborhood, and hung out there until midnight.

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!

We got up at 7:15, which wasn’t that pleasant, but we had to be out of the room by 8am. Technically we were supposed to get off the ship at 8am (they send people off in groups depending on where they’re going afterward), but since our plans involved a cab to the airport for a 12:30 flight, we had plenty of time.

We went up to the buffet for one last gruel and Maxwell’s Foreclosure, and the place was absolutely packed, to the point we had trouble finding a table. I’ve never seen anything on a cruise ship so crowded, so I was amazed. After eating, we took our carryons down to the 4th deck, where we were supposed to exit. There was a line of people standing there, so we joined it, not really knowing what was going on. (I mean, they were pointed toward the exit.) After standing there a long time without moving, we decided to go to the spot we were originally supposed to meet before debarkation.

We got to the theater and I asked one of the staff about whether we should wait, or if we could get off. She said they were having trouble with the gangway, so we should join everyone in the theatre. We went in and got seats, and ended up waiting there for a very long time. I was glad we’d decided to leave the line, so we could at least sit down.

They finally announced that we could leave, so we headed off the ship and down to the building with all the luggage. The gangway had obviously worked at one point, because ours were the only suitcases left in our disembarkation group. We then took them over to the customs line, and proceeded to stand there FOREVER, because it was run by the most distractable lady on earth. At least it was fun watching the cute drug-sniffing dog running up and down the line.

Finally we were free of the cruise terminal. We got a cab to the airport and went to check in at Cape Air. They told us how to find the gates, took our bags, and sent us on our way with a couple hours to kill. We got coffee at Starbucks, and had a surprisingly decent lunch at Mango’s, which had the only vegetarian food in the terminal. We then went to hang out at Air Margaritaville for a bit, enjoying the airport’s free wifi and a Medalla.

Then it was time to catch our flight, so we headed back to the small-plane terminal. They called our flight time, and directed us down an escalator to the lower level. There we met up with two other couples, and then an agent led us out onto the tarmac. I love any day I get to walk on the tarmac!!

As expected, the plane was tiny. It had 4 rows of seats, but they only let us use three of them. Matt’s seat folded down, so that the front row could exit more easily. They took our carry-ons and stowed them in the nose and over the wings, and of course I forgot to grab my phone or camera. We strapped in, and our pilot (Captain Jim!) just turned around in his seat to tell us about the exits in case of emergency. It was awesome.

And then we were off to Vieques! We took off over the ocean, and hugged the coast of Puerto Rico all the way around the east end of the island. We could see El Yunque National Forest, and Fajardo, the port where the ferries to the islands depart. (We had considered the ferry, but it’s apparently unreliable, slow, and you have to get to Fajardo. Flying was much easier.) Within a few minutes, we could see Vieques, and then the airstrip we were landing on. Seeing the approach and landing out the front window of an airplane feels a lot like a video game. (While I’ve flown an airplane before, I’ve never landed one. I don’t even remember what it’s like.)

We climbed out onto the tarmac at VQS, which could not be more different from the airport in San Juan. It was tiny, with a single building and four circles for airplanes to park. (We were parked in the spot reserved for the W’s private jet – it’s the only resort on the island.) They handed us our carry-ons, and the pilot told us to grab our suitcases off the world’s smallest conveyor belt.

We went inside, and the conveyor belt was no joke – it was maybe 10′ across, with half outside and half inside. Awesome.

We had a Jeep reserved from Maritza’s Car Rental, which I’d chosen because they were the only one advertising airport pickup. The booth was there, but nobody was in attendance. (It had a sign saying it was closed 12-1, and it was after one.) I called them, and they said they were on their way over. In the meantime, a guy sitting there at the airport saw us looking at the tourist map, and came over to talk. It turns out he and his girlfriend were leaving after three days in Vieques, and he wanted to give us some advice. We appreciated that like crazy, because there is hardly anything about Vieques on the internet beyond the usual TripAdvisor stuff. No good maps, no restaurant menus, no great advice beyond which beaches to go to and “you need a Jeep to get anywhere”.

They gave us loads of advice on getting around, on beaches to visit (he verified the Jeep thing), about the BioBay, and even which restaurants had good vegetarian food, as they were also vegetarian. He showed us everything on the map, too, and we lamented that that awesome tourist map wasn’t online anywhere. (Vieques is small enough that they can draw almost every single business on the island on the map. Really.) He also told us what he’d been told: Vieques has 9,000 people and 3,000 horses, so watch out for them on the road. Our car showed up a few minutes later, so we thanked them profusely and headed out.

I was expecting a crappy beat-up Jeep, but what we got was fantastic. It was basically brand new! I was super-excited to drive a Jeep, too, because I never had before. We named it Captain Ron, following our longstanding ‘Captain’ tradition.

We’d decided to do a VRBO rental in Vieques, based on advice from other people and the fact that they really don’t have much in the way of hotels beyond the W (which was $600 a night, and really not our style). It was about 1:45 and we couldn’t check in at the house til 3, so we decided to drive into town to the grocery store before calling the owner to get directions.

Vieques has two towns – Isabel Segundo, where the ferry lands on the north side of the island – and Esperanza on the south side. They’re barely even towns, really… Isabel is larger and is maybe 10 square blocks. There’s one main road that runs across the top of the island, from the airport and the W, just past Isabel II. From there, there are three main roads that go north-south, all ending up in Esperanza. The entire eastern half of the island is protected nature preserve / former bombing range, and a lot of it is still closed due to the very real possibility of land mines. (The US military rented out Vieques and Culebra as bombing grounds up through the 1960s, which is why they’re still so undeveloped.)

We took the main road into Esperanza (passing a cockfighting facility along the way), looking for the grocery store the couple had recommended. He said that it looked sketchy, so we decided it was the bodega on the corner. We parked the Jeep, locked everything (we’d been warned), and went to the store. We ended up with an overfull basket, a bottle of rum, and some $3/bottle Kona beers, and a huge backup of people in line behind us while they run us up.

They didn’t have everything we wanted at the store, so we went down a couple blocks to the other grocery store we’d seen. That was the actual grocery store, we realized as we entered. We stocked up on more supplies for tacos, plenty of drink mixers, coffee, plantain chips, and other things we needed to stock up at the hacienda (our name for the rental house, based on the awesome photos). We grabbed a 6-pack of Medalla, too.

Once we were fully outfitted, I called the owner. My signal kept going in and out, and I barely had an internet connection, despite T-Mobile’s assurances of 4G LTE in all of Puerto Rico. I got his voicemail, so I left a message and we decided to drive on and see things until he called back. A little ways down the road, my phone rang, so I pulled over and grabbed it. It wouldn’t connect, of course. Finally, we found a spot where my phone worked, and I got the owner on the line. It turned out he was in Maryland at the time.

His directions to the house were something like this: “Go down the road until you see mom&pop store, and then there’s a two-story wooden building that looks like it’s falling down, but it’s actually a store. Turn there. Go by some mailboxes and turn there. Look for a house called ____ and it’s right past there. There’s a really steep driveway.” Then he told me where to find the key. We went over the directions again since that stuff was not on my tourist map (as far as I could tell), and then Matt and I set off to find it. Since I’m godawful at landmark-based directions (I like cardinal, thank you very much), I told Matt twice what he had told me, so we wouldn’t forget it.

We found the first grocery store, and then the falling-down building was unmistakeable (it would later become known as “the ramshackle”). We found the mailboxes, and the house he’d named, so we knew we were in the right place. It was at the top of a very tall hill, and the road up there was gorgeous.

We turned the only direction we could go from the house, and looked for a steep driveway. Down the road a little bit, we came to the top of a cliff. It wasn’t a road, it was what you see when you get to the top of the biggest hill on a rollercoaster, and can’t actually see the track below you. I flipped out. There was no way in hell I was taking a vehicle, or anything, down that gigantic steep hill. That kind of road would not even be legal on the mainland.

(This was only the top, and doesn’t do it justice. But hey, you can see the ocean and the bioluminescent bays from there!)

We sat there parked at the top of the hill, and decided we had no choice. He’d said it was a really steep driveway, after all. This was more of a road than a driveway, but it was also the steepest thing I’d ever seen. So we started off.

I rode the brake the whole way down, unsure whether to let up and tear down the hill to get it over with, or whether I’d hold on too long and we’d tumble onto the roof. I’ve never been so terrified driving before. We were leaning back as far as we could, because I was sure we were going to flip right over.

But we made it!! At the bottom was a whole big crowd of peacocks waiting for us. I was so upset about the hill that I didn’t even bother taking their picture. (Mostly it was the prospect of having to drive down that same hill every single day, even at night, while we were there. We’d never leave the house.)

What was not at the bottom of the hill was the house we were looking for. There was a dead end, so we turned around (which was a challenge). We looked around, and the house was definitely not there – I’d seen pictures online, and these were not it. We’d have to drive BACK UP the same damn hill.

Part of the way up, we saw a guy hanging out in his garage, so we stopped and asked if he had any idea where the place might be. He wasn’t sure, but thought maybe it was back up at the top by the ____ house. We hadn’t seen anything else up there, but we had to go back up there anyway. Unbelievably, we made it back up the hill. At that point, I absolutely knew for sure why people drove 4WD in Vieques.

We ended up back by the ____ house, our last known waypoint, and I found a spot where I could get a signal again. We called and talked to the owner, and he said we’d gone too far; the driveway was immediately past the ___ house. When he said that, we recalled the gap in the fence  at the end of the wall, and I knew that had to be it. I thanked him, and we turned back around.

By the time we turned, there was a horse walking out of the driveway to our hacienda. He was showing us the way, obviously. I nosed the Jeep into the fence-gap, and then we could see the house at the bottom of what was indeed a very steep driveway. But that driveway was nothing like the road we’d just driven down, so that made it seem easy. We parked the Jeep, dragged out our bags and groceries, and I went to retrieve the key.

Our hacienda was AMAZING.

There was a patio that wrapped around two sides of the house, and the one with the grill and coconut palms had a view of the nature preserve and the ocean. It was perfect.

There were geckos all over the place, too.

The place was gigantic, and decorated with African masks and furniture that had obviously been acquired over many years. There was a full kitchen (we were looking forward to cooking after a week), and a washer and dryer so we could do the laundry. I got on that right away, of course.

After so many days of constant motion, always having to make transportation plans and stick to schedules and cut short our time in places, I was really excited at the idea of just staying at the house for the rest of the day. It was exactly 3pm, we had all the groceries we needed, and we were alone on top of a hill overlooking the ocean. It was  perfect. We opened some beers and sat in deck chairs on the patio, watching birds in the trees. (I was on the lookout for more horses in the yard, too.)

The palm tree over our heads had a couple really big coconuts on it, but they were well out of our reach. Since the VRBO listing had mentioned picking your own coconuts, I was determined to make it happen. I knew we wouldn’t be able to open them without a machete, so I went poking around the laundry closet where things seemed to be stored. I found two machetes in there, so I brought one out and we started swinging at the coconut. It was still too far away to reach the branch holding it, though, so I went back to the utility closet and found an extendable painting pole.

We had to stand on a planter, and it took a good half-hour or so to make it happen, but we got that damn coconut off the tree. Then we took turns hacking at it til we got it open, and drained the juice out. (We managed to open it the rest of the way after that.)

Then Matt made cocktails with the coconut juice and Barrilito, and it was the greatest thing ever. (He named it the Caribella: Barrilito, lime, soursoup juice, simple syrup, and coconut water.) We sat on the patio for a very long time, just staring at the forest and the ocean beyond it. We had some plantain chips, and watched a huge team of ants carry a tiny piece of chip away at an alarming pace.

Round about dinnertime, we headed to the kitchen and made tostones and tacos with sofrito rice, beans, cheese, and huitlacoche. Matt made flank steak churrasco on the grill. We ate on the patio with a mosquito coil burning, but didn’t really see much evidence of bugs at all, which surprised me. There were super-loud frogs (particularly the Puerto Rican mascot, who yells COQUI!) and geckos running everywhere, and the weather was absolutely perfect.

While we were playing dominoes outside, I started to feel like I was getting a cold. OF COURSE. We decided to go inside and turn on the bedroom A/C and hang out. Matt turned on the TV to see if we could find the Gophers hockey game, since it was on one of the ESPN channels that night, and the place had satellite. Well, apparently they turn off the service when they’re not there, because all we got were a ton of free channels (which were mostly home shopping). Thankfully, DirecIV was doing a free preview promo, and one of the included channels was the NHL Network. So we got to watch some hockey after all.