Familiar Old Grounds and New Discoveries

We started around the apartment, because the Garden District of New Orleans is a beautiful place, full of live oak and local businesses. The Trolley runs through it all, from east to west and back again, and both Saint Charles to the north and Magazine to the south are filled with businesses, restaurants, and coffee shops. Our place is between the two and we could walk as we needed between them. Saint Charles has the trolley that heads downtown and to the French Quarter and a block away along it is a little grocery store that's perfect for vacationers.

The picture on the far left is the local Market. It's got a lot of prepped food, beautiful produce, and a lot of high end foods and a whole second floor of alcohol. The middle picture is one of the local magnolias. the one on the right is John while we wait for our beignets from the Vintage Cafe, which has a few beignet, wonderfully brewed coffee, and wasn't all that crowded. They double as a bar, for the evening festivities, which is why you see the lovely display behind John. And it was a wonderful walk to breakfast. 

Just going around the "block" we ran into some wonderful things. A historic house that also served the city as a museum and musical conservatory, and the local above ground graveyard, which had these amazing walls, covered in growing things. Ferns and everything growing in the mortar, exposed under the covering surrounding the walls. I want to go into this one as it's so close to us, but we'll see how possible that is.

After breakfast we went into New Orleans on the trolley. The trolley driver told everyone to wear their mask in order to get onto the trolley, which was reassuring. The ride was slow and bumpy but really steady and solid. There were new tracks put in going into town that headed right to Canal Street, went a ways down it and came back through the other way. We stepped off a bare block away from Bourbon Street and right by our old hotel.

So we stepped back into the Old Neighborhood. All the art galleries, kitch shops, t-shirt stores, gawds and gews, hot sauce, and candy shops next to beautiful old vintage antiques, handcrafted jewelry, and fantastic and fascinating fashion by all the masks, beads, and crazy Mardi Gras costumes one might imagine and a few that one might not. I've always loved this particular old antique shop and it hasn't changed even fifteen years later, with all the similar glass and lights that it has always had. 

We walked all the way down to the waterfront, and came back through the open aired market by Cafe Du Mond, and by the old Central Market. Central Market is temporarily closed due to roof damage, so no original muffuletta are available through them. There are, of course, plenty of folks willing to sell knock-offs. 

The weather was on and off again rain with sun breaks. On the most part the rain didn't bother us all that much, in part because we had our rafting hats, and in part because it's such a treat to be out in the rain for us. But when the rain started falling pretty heavily at noon, we ducked into the remarkably short line for the Acme Oyster House. It was always one of our favorite spots so it was great to see it bustling, with a maître de of obviously gay bent who cheerfully and loudly demanded immunization proof before equally cheerfully showing each one to their table or seat at the bar. 

My favorite dish there was this, their grilled oysters, which are grilled in butter with plenty of garlic and topped with parmesan that crusts and crisps to a beautifully rich and salty crunch. The white bread they serve with it soaks up all the oyster juices and is better than any utensil for eating it with. We also had small cups of red beans and rice and gumbo to fill in whatever cracks were left and to help balance some of the richness.

We then made our way back on the trolley, did laundry, hit the market for milk, fruit, and other things we wanted for breakfasts and then went out to see the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. When we were here for Biloxi work, we always came with the whole crew in vans that we'd rented at the airport, so once we were in New Orleans, we stayed in New Orleans, and mostly made our way around on foot the whole time, so this being able to be mobile in an actual car that could fit in a normal parking lot was a whole new thing. 

We went directly north, to the Lake (which looked more like an ocean, but then we could see the faint ghost of the Causeway floating over the surface of the water) and got to walk around and see the seagulls crying over fresh water. The GPS said that we were a whole five feet over the level of the ocean! I really enjoyed that. 

One haunting thing in the Levee District were the Walls of the Levee itself. Knowing that the walls were there to keep the water out was pretty amazing. The Park is outside the walls, and the locks were huge gates that loomed over either side of the roads that went through them into neighborhoods of all kinds. We were out in the Metaire neighborhoods we had seen years and years ago as a group, but was a lot of fun to see them all solid as good, old suburbs to the City.

We actually drove by a huge neighborhood filled with mansions that were just on the edges of these areas that could be locked off in the case of flood. 

We wandered by the waterfront and managed to get through to the docks and found these amazing little houses that were built over docks into the waters. Each of these houses were tiny, and the garages underneath all opened up to the water! We stopped to talk to someone on their upper balcony, watching the sunset, and he said he loved living there. He'd been there for three months, and could see the sunset every evening and the sunrise on the other side every morning. Ida had destroyed a lot of them, but those who could rebuilt had, and there were two big construction sites John and I saw being built while we were there. 

After exploring all of that we headed south again and across town, across various channels and made it to the Come Back Inn. Seeing how the water works its way through town is amazing. In the West water is so scarce, the acknowledgement of how the control of water is so necessary here is real. 

One of our friends in Longmont is a photographer who came to Longmont after Katrina, and he recommended the Come Back Inn for the food. They're doing a very solid take out business, but we sat down inside and had plenty of room to feel safe and eat the Mountain of food they gave us. 

The condiments were fun, it's good to see what kind of pepper sauce is really served here. 

The catfish platter John got looks like it could feed a family of four, but the fish is super fresh and the breading is super light. It's piled on a huge pile of french fries which are resting on four pieces of buttered toast. My bowl of red beans and rice was big enough to feed me for at least two more meals, I think. The pork chop was crisp, not at all greasy, and tender and thin. It was so good as a condiment to the creamy red beans. The beans had been obviously cooked with onions, meat, and plenty of spices. The chewy rice was just cooked enough. 

It came with bread and salad. The price was amazingly low, and the quality was so good. 

Afterwards, we came back to the apartment, got a little ice cream from our grocery store, and settled back in. It's good to have a very comfortable place to return to and spread out. It was so nice to just have a mug of hot herbal tea. But we settled to the TV and watching what else is going on in the world. 

Good news is that my tooth not hurting nearly as much as it was. We did make an appointment with a local dentist to get the bite checked, but it's not hurting. Things may be healing, which means that the bite isn't Bad, it just feels off. I think it'll work.