USA 2009 – New Orleans Day 2 and 3

I’m writing this at 4am on Day 4 in New Orleans as I struggle with a patch of insomnia. It’s taken me a few days to get a handle on this city, and I admit on Day 1 and 2 I was not really enjoying it that much.

From the neighbourhood that we are staying in I got the feeling that we were having a holiday in Davoren Park or Kilburn.

Davoren Park, SA

New Orleans, LA

Then if you walked for 10 minutes into the French Quarter you were in an area akin to Hindley Street but in amongst a lot of old historic buildings, as every second business seemed to be either a bar or a dodgy t-shirt/souvenir shop. Not to mention Bourbon street which was either dodgy bar or dodgy strip club.

That combined with the really terrible walking conditions, which by the end of Day 2 had resulted in both Michelle and I spraining ankles, I was starting to wonder what we were doing here.

Streets of NOLA

Whilst the ankle injuries were fairly minor, I thought it best we play it safe so we could make it through the rest of the trip, so Michelle (reluctantly) and I spent the afternoon of Day 2 back at NOLA home base with feet up, ice packs on ankles and Ibuprofen on board.

After a few hours of Nurse Stephen enforced treatment we met up with Pat who’d been stalking the French Quarter alone then went off to meet Helene (who’d flown down from Canada) before we went for dinner and a few doses of liquid painkiller.

Day 3 started slowly for me, Michelle was up early and had found herself a gym where she could go and pick-up and then put-down heavy things for a while (despite her sprained ankle) and Pat and Helene were up and planning the day. Michelle got me out of bed when she got back from the gym and informed me of the plan for breakfast and then a Hurricane Katrina tour.

We went to a place recommended by the Lonely Planet because is sounded good and was close to where the tour started. Whilst the decor was nice with a beautiful ceiling mural, the food was very ordinary. If I could remember the place’s name I’d recommend it as one to avoid.

Although both of our ankles were feeling substantially better I was glad that we’d be on a tour bus for a few hours to give us a bit more rest.

Whilst you might think a tour of disaster zones a little morbid, for all of us this was an eye opening experience and which for me put my initial thoughts of the city into some perspective and gave me pause to reconsider the way I was experiencing NOLA.

We were the only people on the tour (which I think says something about how the businesses in the city are still struggling) and our tour guide who ironically called herself “Kat” (although it was short for Katherine not Katrina) was an amazing woman. A lot of here commentary was her stories of surviving the storm and it’s aftermath.

To try and sum up the tour in a few short paragraphs is just not possible, so I thought I’d just include a few of the pictures we took.

Kat was kind enough to drop us back to our doorstep, which happened to be just around the corner from where she lived. We took a few moments to re-group then headed out for what was going to be a short walk.

We stopped off at Bistro Marigny just down the street and embibed in a few cocktails after we got one “”to go” (liquor laws are very relaxed here) we continued our wanderings.

We ducked into an antique shop and had a quick look around. As we were leaving we had the following strange conversation:

Shop owner: Nothing here for you?
Stephen: It’d all be a bit to big for our carry on luggage.
SO: When are you heading back to Australia.
S: How could you pick our accents.
SO: I used to live and work in Adelaide.

And so the conversation continued. We found out that the store owner “Bruce” had lived in Crafers and worked at the Port Stanvac Oil Refinery. He was surprised to hear that it had been closed down and was being converted to a de-sal plant. Even though we still hadn’t bought any of his antiques he recommended a restaurant called Adolfo’s for dinner. Our short walk had turned into bar hopping, Louisiana/Adelaide antique dealers then dinner.

Adolfo’s was tucked in a small upstairs room which could seat about 15 people. We must have arrived early because we could get a table without queuing. The food was excellent, snails in garlic butter to share as a starter. Various fish dishes for the others and I had an excellent veal dish. The Chilean waiter was similar in nature to Manuel from Faulty Towers and was interesting to watch. At one point he came to take our order, wrote down what Michelle was having and then seemed to get distracted.. seated another group, took some dishes from the kitchen out to other tables, poured himself a beer and did a few other things. About fifteen minutes later he was back at our table with “Are you ready to order?” completely oblivious to the fact that he’d started taking our order 15 minutes before hand. Because the place was so small and we could see this guy running from one task to the next the bad service was part of what made it a fun night.

Meanwhile in the bar downstairs there was a Japanese blues singer singing unintelligibly in Japanese and broken English which added yet another surreal touch to finish off day 3.