So far 50% of my family is done with travelling for now and are alive. 50% have a month to go so we’ll reserve judgement. I still think the last will and testament was a good thing.
New Orleans. Hrm. It wasn’t what I expected, let’s start with that. To be sure, I couldn’t put in to words exactly what I did expect but the reality wasn’t it. I had a fair to middling time but, in all fairness, that might have been as much due to the company I was with as the town itself. But I doubt it.
We had a great little hotel about half a block from St. Charles Ave – the main drag between Uptown and Downtown – and about three blocks Uptown from the interstate.
Before I go further, let me throw some info your way. Since NO is built in a bend of the river – hence the name “Crescent City” – north, south, east and west are essentially meaningless. At the very least they have virtually no correlation with the street plan. So, instead of the cardinal directions, you have Lakeside, Riverside, Uptown and Downtown. The Lakeside and Riverside appelations should be self-explanatory. Uptown is upriver – towards the Mississippi’s source – and Downtown is downriver – towards the ocean. OK, now you’ll understand what I’m saying and may not look like a total useless tourist if you ever go.
So, we were Uptown on the St. Charles Ave. streetcar line. Across St. Charles was a decent barbeque place and (Thank God!) a great little neighborhood bar with excellent beer on tap and delicious food 24 hours a day.
The first day we ambled. Somewhere I spotted that the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were to be held in the Irish Channel that day. Since that was just a little ways Uptown we wandered over there. Found another great little neighborhood bar and had Guinness and Po Boys out on the street before taking in the parade. Basically it looked to me like all the leftovers from Mardi Gras were out with their floats. Beads cascaded by the hundreds. Green flowers were freely given. Cabbages, carrots, potatoes and onions rained on our heads. Everyone was drinking, yelling and grabbing for trinkets. Damn fun. I’d go back to see that spectacle again.
The next day was our day in the Vieux Carre (French Quarter). Did a bit of an NPS tour, caught church at St. Louis Cathedral and did the Cabildo museum. The French Quarter is not a pleasant place to be for the most part. We were there before most places opened on a Sunday morning and got to see whole pickup truck loads of garbage in the street while the smell of piss and stale beer wafted as much as two blocks from Bourbon Street. By the afternoon it was so loud and crowded you didn’t want to be anywhere near the place. Jackson Square, however, is far more pleasant. If I went back, that’s where I’d spend my time. Wandering the French Market, sitting on the porch of one of the Pontalba buildings or on a bench in the Place d’Armes.
Monday was burnt in the D-Day Musuem. Cool place, boring to most everyone but me and with surprisingly few artifacts. Still, it took all day to see.
Tuesday I got to see the Confederate Memorial Hall which was, in its way, far more interesting and impressive than the multi-million dollar D-Day Musuem across the street. Then we headed way Uptown, past Tulane and Loyola Universities to the end of the St. Charles line and finally into Audobon Park for a stroll in the sunshine.
I feel fairly confident I saw the high points of the city. If anyone ever wanted company on a trip down, particularly someone inclined to a little bit of partying, I’d go along but I am satisfied that for myself, I don’t ever need to go back. It’s odd, most towns I dig. I’d love to go back to Frisco even though it was a dirty, seemingly poor, NYC in the mid-80s kind of town. I go to Boston any chance I get and have even developed a bizarre tender spot towards the current incarnation of New York City but I just didn’t catch the same vibe from New Orleans.
I think it’s because the city is fake. From all the reports it’s severely economically depressed. The outlying neighborhoods are gorgeous but downtown is rough and tumble. The only thing left, apparently, is the tourist and drunken college kid trade. Hence the noise and booziness of Bourbon Street. Unfortunately it wasn’t a genuine booziness like you’d find in an old pub in any city in the world, it was the sort of manic drunken slobbery you expect of beer-bonging kids. Pitiful.
Once upon a time I bet NOLA was a hell of an interesting place. Now it’s just got the facade left: the adventures are all sanitized for the tourist trade, the gumbo has been sitting in the pot all day and the cafe au lait is just fair to middling.
Despite it all I enjoyed myself as much as I could and it was, after all, not here. There’s much to be said for that fact alone.