New Orleans

I had the best time in New Orleans! What a great {weird} city! Katie is sooo awesome for letting me not only crash at her place {and sleep on a futon in the common area of her house as a result}, but also took me around to all the best places for a packed agenda every single day. Whatta gal, yeah?

{Click thumbnails to open the pictures in Flickr, or see them all at once here.

Day 1 {Saturday}:

• Audubon Park, right by Katie’s place. So pretty!

• Coffee shop for a café au lait.
• Shopping antique and consignment stores at Magazine Street.
• Seafood gumbo for me; salami po’ boy for Katie.
• New Orleans Museum of Art : A really nice museum. Highlighted with a creepy puppet exhibit I can’t stop thinking about:

• Calzones at The Slice.
• Bourbon Street & Harrah’s Casino.
• Beignets {delish}.

Day 2 {Sunday}:

• Oak Alley Plantation tour.  Beautiful grounds and home, and a great tour guide. The oaks were massive and so beautiful. We purchased mint juleps at the end of the tour.

• French Quarter; French Market, voodoo doll store. CUUUUTE ones, and I bought several {for me and for gifts}. Then we got to spin the wheel of fortune and won $35 in more voodoo goodness – huzzah! You can check them out here. I’ll post pictures of the ones I bought once I give them to their intended recipients. They are so awesome.

• Loose Marbles at Spotted Cat Bar – so fun!! So… jazzy… Swing dancers showed up on the second half of their set. I don’t know enough about jazz, but I think I could love it. Live music everywhere in the city, as expected.
• Po’ boys at Parasol’s (Catfish for me}. This was maybe my favorite thing I ate in New Orleans. Apparently the diviest places are the best.
• Gelato at a seriously cute and girly shop.

Day 3 {Monday}:

• Breakfast at a cafe. So much butter involved.
• Back to Audubon Park. Katie loves the pretty statue there, and I love that she loves it so much she brought me back just for that. What a great guide. The park was so lovely, I could have walked around there all day.
• Metairie Cemetery. So many beautiful tombs had me alternating between wishing for Halloween/ in the mood to read vampire novels, and making me very, very aware of my mortality. Katie has weird obsessions with cemeteries {always has} and works for a company that provides funeral planning for families. How perfect. She taught me about the vaults, and how the bodies are stacked as members of the family die. The tombs are above ground to prevent them from washing away in the event of flooding.

• Got daiquiris to go and took the street car to lunch.
• Lots of walking around.
• BBQ for dinner {pulled pork po’ boys}.
• Bourbon Street action… this place is weirder than Vegas. Old and beautiful, and full of history that is often sad, tragic, and downright horrifying. Such a blend of culture, religion, language, art, music, color, style. As a result, literally anything goes.

• Haunted tour. Paranormalcy (?) ensued, for real. Our tour stops in front of the LaLaurie Mansion, and the guide warns us, people often faint at this location. It’s unexplained, but happens. I am a complete skeptic with everything, and I’m in no way squeamish. I don’t believe in ghosts. The guide tells the {likely fabricated} tale of horrifying things that happened on the third floor of the mansion, involving ghastly medical procedures done to conscious slaves owned by the couple who occupied the mansion. Maybe halfway through the macabre, I start to feel woozy. My forehead begins sweating profusely, even though I am shivering. My hands are clammy and my head feels heavy. I feel like I might throw up. I look at Katie and say “I’m gonna pass out.” I lean against the building and look at her and my vision blackens. All I see is Katie’s face, like I’m looking through a pinhole, and everything else is completely black. I fight it with everything to stay standing and not let my head smack the concrete in front of 20 strangers. I crouch down, head between my knees for a while until I regain the ability to see and the panicky feeling dissipates a little. After that, I feel 80% normal and continue to walk. The next story gives me another wave of nausea, but I handle it. I was never scared or felt particularly bothered by the gruesome descriptions {more than the next guy, you know} so it really is unexplained. Crazy way to end the trip and I am still bothered that I can’t explain it.

Awesome trip!

I posted the thumbnails because when I saw them arranged on Flickr, it seemed like such a nice representation of the city- all the colors, the old and new and funky and alternative and weird. The historical and the artsy and the completely tacky. And it all blends into a lovely {though arguably kind of freaky} mosaic.

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