After Mardi Gras world, we took the Mardi Gras shuttle back to Canal and walked over to the Huck Finn Restaurant to pick up our City and Cemetery tour. We ordered Boudin Wraps from Huck Finn, had a drink and by the time our food was ready the tour was ready too. We headed out on a little mini bus, sitting in the back to eat lunch as we toured.
John our tour guide was a local Cajun, he talked about living in the area, working a couple of jobs and just living the New Orleans life. As we drove down the road he talked about the historic sites around us. Laundromats that used to be recording studios, parks that were central in the practice of religion for slaves, and how New Orleans got it’s reputation for things like Voodoo. We passed by St Louis Number 1, but did not stop. (Leaving me very disappointed, I didn’t realize it was a different tour. ) We drove around the French Quarter, Canal, Rampart talking about the French and Spanish influence on the city, and why New Orleans has such a Caribbean influence.
When we booked our cruise, I’d seen an excursion called “Katrina tour”. I was horrified that the houses and landmarks of Katrina were considered excursion material. Well as the tour got underway, that was exactly where we were headed. I wasn’t sure what to think about it. As we headed towards the Lower 9 th Ward, John provided the context of the situation, showed us how to read the marks on the house showing when they were finally rescued, and talked about home owner responsibility after the flood. He talked about how we were limited to where we could go, as the city has put limitations on tour operators to let people have their lives back.
While it was informative and I learned a lot about Katrina that I didn’t know, it was still stomach churning to see dilapidated houses crumbling and homes with signs out front asking for financial donation for recovery assistance.
From there we drove out to St Louis Number 3, which was our Cemetery tour. Cemeteries in Seattle have the occasional famous grave and people who go seeking them out. New Orleans has tours of their Cemeteries, in part because of the architecture. In a city built on swamp land, burying bodies in the ground doesn’t work out well. So they have formal catholic cemeteries with mausoleums built out of marble and stone. Incredible intricate, they are family burial places intended to satisfy the burying needs of the family for life. (The Prudhomme family tomb for example)
After St Louis Number 3, we went to City Park a 1300 acre public park in the middle of the city. We drove around a bit and looked at the Christmas decorations, then made a stop at Morning Call coffee stand for beignets and coffee. (Again, white apron service, at a concession in a city park. That would never fly in Seattle!) Morning Call is open 24 hours a day, and I romanticized the idea of 2am beignets with a loved one. The park has a petting zoo, crystal gardens, a sculpture garden and much more. I think we could probably spend an entire day enjoying it. Instead we headed back onto the bus where we drove through the Garden District and by Tulane University on our way back to the original pick up point. From there Mike and I headed back to the Airbnb to get ready for Dinner at Emerils.
Dinner at Emerils.
Mike and I celebrate our anniversary as the day after Thanksgiving, no matter what the actual date is. It’s easy to remember and ensures we always have a 3 day weekend for our anniversary. Since this years Anniversary was so close to our time in New Orleans, we opted to celebrate with dinner at Emerils. We both got dressed up and arrived at Emerils NOLA for an 8:30 reservation.
We started with drinks in the bar, a Basil Lemonade for me, a Blackberry Smash for Mike. Once we were seated at our table we were officially introduced to our serving team of 3. We started with a cheese board of four cheeses with relish, BBQ shrimp with rosemary biscuit and duck liver toasts. The cheeses each came with an individual pairing for example: Vella Jack, with Roasted Corn, Poblano and Bread and Butter Pickle Salsa. They’ve changed out the menu, so I can’t speak to what cheeses we had, but we liked them all. The BBQ shrimp were amazing, with a Worcestershire style bbq sauce that was amazing, and the cutest little rosemary biscuit. The duck liver toasts were only ok, I found the stack to be difficult to eat and that there were too many flavors competing.
Dinner was a truffle fried chicken for 2, with “All the fixings” . In this case, a crock of beans, a jar of coleslaw, and a crock of macaroni and cheese. The chicken was well cooked, savory and not overpowered with truffle. It was incredible. We topped the evening off with a piece of banana cream pie for Mike and a creme de menth martini for me. (Not actually what I ordered, but I wasn’t going to send stuff back)
We ended dinner happy and full. I spent a lot of time just enjoying the restaurant, peering into the kitchen and soaking it all in. I was encouraged to take pictures of the kitchen, but didn’t want to be that person. Service was ok, but not amazing despite the three person team. Mike kept having to ask for refills of his diet coke. (How hard is it to keep that refilled?) I got served the wrong drink. On the other hand, they kept apologizing for how long our dinner took in coming out to us, and they were nice and apologetic every time we reminded them about the soda. We also noted how nicely everyone was dressed. Not a pair of jeans or gym shoes to be seen on the patrons. Very un-Seattle like.
A Nightcap.
We wandered over to Harrahs on our way back to the Airbnb. Mike wanted to hit the craps table, and I just wanted to sit and soak in the energy. I got a hurricane at the bar and settled in, he hit the tables briefly. It’s an interesting location, with all the feels of a big Vegas casino. We snagged a cab from the hotel, and headed home.
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Cabs in New Orleans.
We evidently stayed in a “sketchy” area. Of the cabs that we took to the Airbnb, one drove away with the door open to get away from the place, another asked us repeatedly if we really wanted to stay there. Interesting. That said, we were in the Bywater neighborhood, and it was a sleepy little mashup of Seattle’s Fremont and Ranier Valley.
Cabs were fairly easy to come by, either by calling the cab company directly, picking one up at Harrahs or another transportation hub. Most were friendly, one did rip me off , securing an extra 5 in tip, when he dropped us off from the airport. It turned out that cabs and walking were really all the transportation we needed in New Orleans.
(Friday morning.)We woke up and took our time leaving the BnB. I looked up the bus times, but we decided we’d just wander our way through the neighborhood towards our first destination. Cafe DuMonde. We walked along the water front, hoping to find a view of the mighty Mississippi, but were thwarted by uncrossable levy boundaries. We joked about my lack of coffee, to the extent that when we wandered past the PJsCoffee Roastery, we considered stoping to see if they sold coffee to drink. I wanted to hold off until we hit the iconic Cafe DuMonde. In the Daylight we retraced our steps through FrenchmenStreet, and down down Decatur. As we walked, shopkeepers encouraged us to check out their wares. Someone handed us a sample of pralines that were warm, sweet with a little bit of a nutty chew. It was a revelation worlds away from the ones we had the night before at the Praline Connection. At the cooking class we took on Saturday we would learn why.
We finally made our way to Cafe DuMonde:
We got there and found that there was a line. Despite a crowd under the green awnings and a line of folks waiting to get in we were seated swiftly. In some ways they are the shining example of efficiency. They only sell a few things, cafe au lait, beignets, orange juice and hot cocoa. They serve what people want, what they are good at and no more. The service is also crisp, and they take cash only. The beignets were fluffy and covered with powdered sugar. The underlying dough wasn’t very sweet but with the powdered sugar it paired well with the cafe au lait.
The efficiency made the experience feel a little less genuine though. Instead of lingering over coffee in a relaxed fashion, I was too aware that there was a line and the hovering servers looking to turn the tables for the next set of tourists.
We perused a set of tour brochures as we ate our breakfast. We decided to take a City/Cemetery tour, and a tour of MardiGras world , plus Mike booked us on the Steamboat Nachtez for dinner Saturday night. First up? Mardi Gras world.
Mardi Gras world is in a warehouse down off the Mississippi river. It is a working art studio, storage facility and event venue. The Krewes of Mardi Gras don’t own their own floats, they only lease them from year to year , with Mardi Gras world’s artists helping recycle, restore and recreate the floats from year to year. For example, what is a hobbit hole this year, becomes Shrek’s hovel next year. The Krewes own the underlying trailers, which are worth up to 80K. Krewes have at least 14 floats in each parade, some holding as many as 40 people with their beads, plushies and other tokens. (The trailers even have bathrooms because float riders are often stuck on the floats upwards of 8 hours. )
We started with a piece of King Cake,
a short video on the history of Mardi Gras and the Krewes, and then a chance to walk the Prop shop with our guide. It was overwelminjg to say the least.
We saw a lot of familiar figures:
And even got to try on a few props ourselves:
We even saw how they transition on theme to another.
We could have stayed for hours looking at what they were working on.
From there, we called the Mardi Gras World Shuttle and asked them to take us back to the Central Business District, where we headed off to Huck Finn's to meet our Cajun Encounters City and Cemetery Tour guide John.
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Food and Service in New Orleans: I’m talking a lot about food. Thats going to be a constant thread throughout this trip. One, New Orleans is known for food. Two, I’m still a food blogger at heart. We’ll get more in depth into what the food of New Orleans is and the differences between Cajun and Creole in my next post. I will note a couple of things though. Cajun/Creole food dominated. We saw 1 Indian restaurant, no mexican, very little generic fast food (a couple McDonalds and 1 Arbys), I know there is a Vietnamese population down there but didn’t see any Pho or Vietnamese restaurants either. It’s likely because we stuck to downtown mostly , but it did provide me a contrast with the food in Seattle. We’re much more of a melting pot of food influences, and you can easily find most any cuisine under the sun.
So while you can find any food in the world in Seattle, you can’t find New Orleans Style service in Seattle, Portland or anywhere else in the Pacific Northwest. We found white tablecloths, attentive waitstaff, and effusive hosts at every restaurant we visited. Even if we were just popping in to grab a drink and use the bathroom, we were well treated, offered waters and checked on, instead of being ditched in the Pacific NW Passive aggressive fashion. It seemed like they wanted us their eating at their restaurants. In Seattle, I’m not sure that’s always the case.
Bags were packed and we were ready to go by 8am. The cats got one last bowl of wet food and Mike’s Dad picked us up for a ride to the Airport. We had considered trying out Lyft, but Mike was able to arrange Mitch to drop us off. It’s nice to have family do that. The flight itself was uneventful We got to the airport with plenty of time, I picked up a small gift for our AirBnB hostess (Victoria) at the Made in Washington store, breakfast at Kathy Casey’s place, then a short wait for the Alaska Airline flight.
With some great tail wind, we arrived nearly 30 minutes early, but combined with the 2 hour time difference we lost nearly 7 hours of our day. We made our way out of the airport found our cab and headed for the AirBnB. I’d talked to Victoria with our flight information and we had agreed that we’d probably be arriving around 7:00. With traffic, our favorable tail winds and a small airport, we were able to arrive by 6pm. The BnB wasn’t ready yet,so we dropped off our bag, got a really quick intro, and suggestions of where to find dinner.
The BnB I chose, was walking distance to the Central Business District and the French Quarter (about a mile away). It was recommended that we find dinner on Frenchmen street, a sort of tamer version of Bourbon Street. Instead of being about Booze and Boobs, Frenchmen was more about music and Art. Being a Thursday night the Frenchmen Art Market was going on and we arrived just in time to see them setting up.
Between the weird Art and the random seating, I would have sworn we were at an evening version of the Fremont Sunday Market. There were soap makers, painters, welders all selling their art. There was also a booth of folks selling a documentary on Train Hopping. (Cure for the Crash:http://www.projectnola.com/the-news/news/4
Victoria had recommended the Praline Connection for our first dinner in New Orleans, and it was an excellent choice. We wandered in to find plastic covered white tablecloths, wait staff decked out in long white aprons, jaunty hats and wide smiles. Settling in with the menu, I zeroed in on chicken livers and a platter of fried seafood. Mike opted for fried shrimp and an appetizer of etouffe.
The fried livers came out in a giant pile with a jalapeño honey dipping sauce. The livers were crunchy on the outside, but still tender on the inside .
Not overcooked in the least. The seafood platter had oysters,shrimp, catfish and crab. I loved everything but the crab. The salad, some of the last fresh vegetables we saw in New Orleans came with pickles as the cucumber element, which i found weird but tasty. I also over ordered, and went home with a doggie bag. We also stopped in their candy store and picked up a praline to sample,on the way home.
We then wandered up and down Frenchmen, visiting the market again, pausing at bars to listen to the music coming from outside. We settled on Snug Harbor wandering towards the back where Terence Blanchard was playing. http://snugharborjazzbistro.tunestub.com/e
We wandered back down to the airbnb, finding a local coffee shop (The Orange Couch) on the way to satisfy my cravings. We unpacked back at the airbnb and settled in for sleep.
A note on Walkability in New Orleans: We initially had booked a rental car for our time in New Orleans, but between figuring out the airport transfers to the cruise terminal, the plethora of narrow one way streets and lack of parking, we decided we would walk or bus most of the time. I pre-ordered bus passes, picked a bnb within a mile of the French Quarter and got the number of a local cab company. We needed up walking more then anything else. This meant my steps only pedometer ranged from 18-20K a day.
That doesn’t mean that New Orleans is easy for walking. It’s an old city, with homes dating to the 1800s. That means the sidewalks are often original cobblestone , some decaying, some displaced by trees, some simply rough or missing. Additionally, we landed in a sleepy neighborhood without a whole lot of overhead streetlights. Because the homes were all shuttered we wondered if people actually lived there. My flats made walking a challenge, and we would often opt to walk in the middle of the street.
I spent the early to mid 1990s in love with Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire series, and New Orleans in general. I read books on the history, watched movies filmed there and even bought tour books convinced that I’d be traveling there in the new future. As happens with life, it just never really happened. So when we went looking for a cruise to book to the Caribbean sailing out of New Orleans was a no brainer. We could enjoy a 7 day cruise in warmer weather with ancient runes, and I would get a chance to explore New Orleans. I added a couple of days of sightseeing time on each side of the cruise and soon we had a nearly 2 week itinerary.
December 4th : Fly toNew Orleans
December 5th : New Orleans Sightseeing
December 6th : New Orleans Cooking Class and Food Tour
December 7th : Cruise Embarkation Day
December 8th: Day at Sea
December 9th: Day in Cozumel
December 10th: Day in Belize
December 11th: Day in Rotan
December 12th: Day at Sea
December 13th: Day at Sea
December 14th: Debarkation and New Orleans Sightseeing.
December 15th: Last Day in New Orleans/Flight Home.
I’ll give the trip report first, New Orleans then the Cruise. Then I’ll share my thoughts and feelings on New Orleans and cruise travel in general.
Some of the pictures will have a Little Red Devil Duckie in it, a hostage Mike took from a coworker. The duckie went on vacation with us and will be posting it’s own adventures on it’s Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/LittleRedDevilDuckie
So it all starts with a plane ride right?Away we go:
There was plenty of news about the site. From PR pieces to questions about funding, to people already giving up because their ideals don’t mesh with the founders. The site itself is minimalist, a simple feed no privacy options and a black/grey/white color scheme that makes it hard to read. My feed of there is pretty anemic as well.
Do we need another social network?
We complain a lot about Facebook. We don’t like that they dictate our feeds. We don’t like that they advertise to us. We don’t like the rules they set, real names, moderated photos and banning people for saying the wrong thing. We want more control, more freedom.
Why a social network?
Some just want to connect to our friends, others want to cultivate an audience. We want to have conversations, share funny pictures and even take stupid quizzes to share the results. We have low content days where simply sharing is enough, and we have days where want to engage in discourse with our friends, their friends and sometimes we want to talk to the world.
Livejournal used to serve that purpose, it was great for long form updates, embedding multiple pictures, including polls, specialized formatting and privacy settings. It also included plethora of focused communities, and the easy ability to create your own group. Yet the live journal applications were easy enough to use that posting a pithy comment or poll result was no big deal.
Livejournal fell out of favor though, as all old sites do. When’s the last time you visited MySpace, Friendster, or Orkut. (Sure that last one is closed now.) There were concerns about the management, there was a lack of updates, and the entire focus of the site seemed to change. The site changed from that site this guy from UW came up with in his dorm room, and into a global journalling platform.
Few people really leave old sites, they simply let their accounts decay. You don’t log in anymore, you don’t go check your feed, you don’t comment on your friends posts anymore. They in turn stop coming, so there is less to comment on and you become even more bored.
So Ello’s been live a couple weeks. In the past 5 days, my 22 friends have published 12 posts, and that
includes comments.
In comparison, one of those people posted 12 updates in the past 24 hours on Facebook.
Why we won’t leave Facebook?
✓ It’s easy. It’s easy to use, we’ve been well trained in the UI , and even when we complain we adjust quickly.
✓ Our friends are already there. It’s a built in audience and we know the rules of interaction. We know what likes, pokes and comments mean.
✓ The ads are inconvenient enough.
✓ We like to complain , especially when we have an audience.
We’re not leaving Facebook yet, Ello.co is not disruptive enough. I’d love to see more from my
friends, more interaction, more substance, but Ello.co is not the answer. I think there might be one
on the horizon, but that’s another blog post later.
Roller Derby!
Originally published at Originally posted at Seattlejo.com. You can comment here or there.
2011 is coming to a close. It’s been a year of travel, adventure and new connections. I’ve started to build community, and have new friends who are close to my heart.
Travel
This year saw me boarding a plane to Indianapolis, Chicago, Houston and Anaheim. I saw travel delays, TSA agents, and exotic airport vendors along the way. I took shuttle buses, stayed at the Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton and with family. I was down in Portland half a dozen times, with trips ranging from a little over 24hours to a full week.
I’ve heard tell that whatever you do on New Years Eve is what you end up doing through the New Year. I’ll be traveling New Years eve, training up from Portland to Seattle. I wonder what that foreshadows for the New Year?
Adventure
Part of my adventure this year has been rediscovering family, meeting new friends, cultivating new relationships.
In March I competed in a business case competition with 2 classmates. We didn’t get first place, but we made a name for ourselves. I learned a lot about presenting in a professioal context, and I know how to approach a business case now. I also became closer to my classmates and have formed one of those friendships that will last, even after the program ends.
In August I flew down to Houston and watched my cousin get married in an beautiful ceremony. Everything is bigger in Texas and the event highlighted for me how big my family is, and how generous they are.
Also in August, I took a road trip with Sunnie where we tackled Glacier National Park and nearly hit cows in the wilds of Montana.
Instead of attending PAX this year I was on vacation with Sunnie. This meant when my Portland friends Jason and Car came up I only had a couple of days with them, a chance to meet and get acquainted, the kindling of a friendship that is helping anchor my community in Portland.
I hit the convention circuit in August, hitting 3 conventions in a row. GeekGirlCon’s inaugural event, SteamCon III and then Blizzcon. All three were amazing in their own right, from awesome musical guests at SteamCon and GeekGirlCon, to awesome costuming, and simply awesome people. While Blizzcon may not have been the networking event i meant to make of it, I did meet new people. I will be visiting Disneyland in March in attempt to get to know one of those new people better.
Community
Who do you hang out with, what corners of the world do you call home? I’m spending more time in the company of academics, muscians, writers and gamers. I’m attending game days, have a regular homework date with a favorite classmate and attend the occasional concert. I have offers to collaborate on conference papers, I have friends to cook with, and I have friends ready to teach me most any game I want to learn.
So the year has been crazily social and It’s a good way to be. There are some twinkling stars in my social landscape, people who made this year amazing. My Partner in Crime (Ryan) and his attitude of adventure , Jason and Car’s unfailing hospitality in Portland. Kim and her patience while attending class with me weekly (and taking me to Blizzcon!). That’s just to mention a few. This year would not be the same without Smrit, Peter, Betse, Joseph, Marc, Susan, Leah, Sunnie, Jasmine, Norma, Patrick.
The usual suspects this year, those ones leading me down the path to adventure and awesome include the following folks.
Kim and Hector, Sunnie, Aron and Ryan.
There were others, but I am sadly lacking photos of them. If you see these people, be ready for awesome.
2012
What does 2012 hold for me? Well like I mentioned before, there is more travel. Back down to Portland for regular visits, hopefully a trip to the Bay area as I look at employers, and the aformentioned trip to Disneyland. I’d like to go to Victoria with Aron for my birthday, and am planning on Alaska with Sunnie in a continuation of our adventures. I’d also like to visit Chicago again. (I’ve found that many of my friends are planning trips to Chicago over the summer for various convetions. I’m not interested in going with, but feel weird about them exploring my home town without me. )
I’ll be finishing my degree in June. This will involve a giant project done for a corporate sponser, a poster session and a 30 second presentation.It’s a big deal, and I’ll share more about the project as it happens. I’m working with Yahoo and a team of students in Texas. The project manages to challlenge my tech skills while appealing to my project management expertise.
By August I’ll know where I’m going to be living for the next few years, and be able to plan further adventures from a new base of operations. Ideally this will be Portland, Seattle, California (Bay area or Irvine) or Chicago. Listed in order of preference, with some metro areas extended, though if I end up in CA or Chicago I don’t have much of a social circle built up and will need take that into account when accepting an offer. My goal is to take have a challenging job that uses my skills and makes me feel valued.
As I face the new year I’m fresh faced and optimistic.
It’s been a happy 2011 and I hope for more of the same from 2012.
Originally published at Originally posted at Seattlejo.com. You can comment here or there.
Fat and Crafty has clearly been lacking for attention over the past year, and on that note I’m officially calling a hiatus. New projects are in the works that deserve attention instead, and I don’t want the guilt trip related to a neglected blog.
When the new site launches I’ll let you know. In the meantime enjoy 2012!
Originally published at Originally posted at Fatandcrafty.com. You can comment here or there.
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