Breast-baring: Not just for Mardi Gras anymore

Last week Sue and I went to New Orleans. I had been wanting to go for some time, since I felt it was the next major U.S. tourist destination that I had not been to, at least as far as cities are concerned. (I've been to New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and Seattle. Maybe Miami is next. Or someplace rural, like Yellowstone.) The occasion for the trip, or at least the excuse, was that it was both near our 3rd wedding anniversary and Sue's 40th birthday. (Yes, I feel a little bad for taking her somewhere I wanted to go for her birthday. I promised she could pick where we go for her 50th.) Also, her parents are here, so we could leave the children behind with them. And the clincher: Southwest had a cheap fare to New Orleans from RDU.

So I bought the tickets a few months ago (before NAQT decided to hold the ICT at Tulane). I decided to keep our destination a surprise, and Sue didn't know where we were going until I got our boarding passes at the airport. We had a very good time. We stayed at the Maison Lagniappe, a B&B in the Fauborg Maurigny district. The hosts were nice and very helpful, the room was fine, and the location was excellent for the price, just a block from the edge of the French Quarter. The second B of the B&B was pretty weak, consisting of just get-it-yourself muffins, donuts, and cereal (and homemade lemon cake), a breakfast only marginally better than what you might get at an average hotel. A sign claimed that a city ordinance prevented them from serving anything more than continental breakfasts, a claim which is apparently true (they would have to have a restaurant license), albeit somewhat unexpected for me.

We did random touristy stuff the first day, walking into various shops on Royal Street and looking at art that we could not afford and mostly didn't like. For a while on the first day it seemed Sue wanted to go into every shoe and clothing store in the French Quarter, but eventually she came around to the idea that the offerings were not so very different from what could be had at home.

We did a couple of walking tours, one of the French Quarter and one of the Garden District. The tour guides were very good, knowing a lot of historical and architectural details. It was interesting to see Anne Rice's house. The guide told us he didn't do gossip, but he did offer us his own "contemporary sociological commentary," which was pretty amusing.

We also went on one combo tour outside of the city where we saw two plantations and a gator swamp. We especially liked the Laura Plantation, even though there was a fire a couple of months ago that heavily damaged the big house itself. The guide was very knowledgeable and it was very interesting. We also saw the Oak Alley plantation, which was beautiful, but the tour itself was given by high school students in costume reciting their spiel by rote. That was sort of dull, but the availability of mint juleps went a long way towards overcoming my disappointment. These were both sugar plantations, not cotton, which was grown further north and in Mississippi and Georgia.

After lunch (gumbo at a local dive), we went on the Cajun Pride swamp tour. That was a lot of fun. We had unusually warm weather for late October (mid-80s), which was often uncomfortable for walking around the city, but on the bright side the gators were pretty active. According to our guide, they often are hibernating by now, and he has to make squirrels seem exciting. Instead we got to see him feed the gators raw chicken, make them jump over his leg like a rather sluggish dolphin, and he even kissed one. We also got to hold a baby alligator and saw some interesting birds (but not pelicans) whose names I didn't really catch. (blue egret?)

We went to several good restaurants ranging from the moderate to the expensive (K-Paul's Kitchen, the restaurant of chef Paul Prudhomme). We didn't attempt to go to the Commander's Palace, which is apparently rated one of the top restaurants in the U.S., and is extremely expensive. I was worried that most dishes would have shellfish that I couldn't eat, and of course many specialties did, but there was lots of good food for me as well. Sue even bought a jar of jambalaya seasoning, which she cooked with sausage last night--and it recognizably tasted like what we had there.

In the evenings, we went to Bourbon Street. I hadn't realized this before, but apparently the entire city of New Orleans--especially Bourbon Street--is on perpetual Spring Break. Maybe that's why it's the Big Easy. First, you can take booze with you wherever you go in the city, so long as the container is plastic. This greatly facilitates bar-hopping. Also, there are a number of strip clubs which I believe rival anything in Las Vegas or San Francisco in terms of raunchiness. To Sue's annoyance, we saw some pretty major groping on the balcony of one establishment, which far exceeded the action that I got out of the lap dance I received at my bachelor party. And let us not forget the curious phenomenon wherein females expose themselves--some briefly, some for fairly extended periods of time--so that strangers on the balconies above can bestow strings of cheap plastic beads upon them. I guess one wears the beads as a badge of honor, or at least some form of pride.

Anyway, we didn't really have a problem with this, but we decided Bourbon Street was a good place for a group of guys or girls to go out (we saw a couple of what appeared to be bachelorette parties), but not really ideal for couples who do not swing. We heard live music at a few places, most of which was simply loud, but one of which was an astoundingly good band that played a number of covers that sounded very close to the originals.

After five days there, I feel I know the city of New Orleans fairly well--certainly I know more streets in New Orleans than in Raleigh. But there were still several things we didn't get to do, including taking the ferry across the river or go on a riverboat cruise. So it may be worth going again in a few years. If and when we do again, I think we'll skip the raucous debauchery of that section of Bourbon Street and try to find some mellower, cool jazz bars.