Welcome to The Big Easy
Well - I've made it to New Orleans, after a fairly uneventful flight (my favourite kind) with a 2-hour stop over in Denver. When I went through the self-service check-in at Seattle it gave me the option of upgrading to "Economy Plus" which has "up to 4 inches of extra leg room" for $53. Hell yeah - even if I only get 1 or 2 inches of extra leg room, I'm happy. I think I got the full 4 though - it was actually quite a comfortable trip. It was also a gorgeous day for flying. my "upgrade" put me on the right side of the plane, and since we were taking off to the south, I had a beautiful view of Mount Rainier as we turned onto our flight path to Denver.
After claiming my bag, grabbing a taxi to the hotel, and checking in, it was about midnight local time by the time I got up to my room. They ended up giving me a smoking room though, instead of non-smoking. However you can't really tell it's a smoking room until you actually leave the room and run into people puffing on their cigarettes while waiting for the elevator. It's a nice room - it's actually quite a nice hotel. I'm pretty pleased. AND it has wired high speed internet access. Yay :-)
I woke up about 5:30am this morning. Why, I have no idea - since it'd be about 3:30am in Seattle. I thought going east-bound I'd be more likely to sleep in and wake up around 9am, but nope. Not me. I made myself to stay in bed until about 7:30 but was finally forced out by my all consuming ravenous hunger. Got dressed, and went downstairs for breakfast.
After breakfast, I decided to orient myself to the city. I walked over to the W Hotel - which will be the site of all of the meetings I need to go to - and then figured out where the convention center was. It was only about 9:30am by the time I got back to the hotel but it was already way too warm for a jacket (it was actually way too warm for my light white cotton sweater and jeans, but not a whole lot I could do about that) so I ditched the jacket in my room, and then headed off to see the sights of New Orleans. This is really my only opportunity for sight seeing, since I have meetings Monday and Tuesday and then fly back Wednesday morning.
Our hotel is near the corner of Canal street and the infamous Bourbon Street. However the concierge and the taxi cab driver from the night before suggested that during the day I'd want to walk along Royal street - it's much more interesting during the day. Bourbon Street is active at night, but apparently doens't have a whole lot going on during the day. So I took their advice. Royal Street is filled with galleries and antique stores and little shops although they were still all closed at that time of the morning, and the street fairly quiet.
I took Royal Street through the French Quarter to St. Louis Cathedral, which if you recall from my previous post, is the oldest continuously active Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States. It was originally built in 1724 and rebuilt twice after a hurricane and a fire. Since it is Sunday, I caught the tail end of a mass when I went in. In fact, I arrived just as they were finishing communion and starting to pass the collection plate. I tell ya - I have the best timing. But I wanted to be respectful, so I stayed and sat quietly in the back, and listened to the hymns and the real pipe organ that was being played by a real pipe organist, and let the hazy childhood memories of going to catholic church on sundays drift over me. When mass was done, I took a look around. It's a gorgeous church, to be sure.
Across from the church is Jackson Square, and as I was crossing the square I saw a line of horse-drawn carriages waiting to give tours of the french quarter to anyone interested. I wasn't sure I wanted to bother, but then I saw this one horse decorated with pretty yellow roses (fake, of course, but still pretty). However the real thing that decided for me that I needed to do this, was when I heard the tour guide speak with his easy, smooth, lilting New Orleans drawl. Wow - I just had to hear more. To be honest I couldn't understand everything he said, but it was really quite pleasant to listen to ;-).
I knew to expect that the French spoken in New Orleans would sound very different from France French or even Quebecois. But it took me quite a while to figure some stuff out. Our tour guide spoke English, but of course, being in the French Quarter, most of the place names were french names. As the tour guide started talking about the "Boo-ka-ray", which he said translated to "old square" I was completely lost. Even having been given the English translation, I was completely stuck. Just as I was thinking to myself that the only word I know in french was "Vieux" It wasn't until I saw the sign "Vieux Carr�" that I understood. He wasn't saying "Boo-ka-ray". He was saying "Voo-ka-ray". But had I realized that, it still wouldn't have helped me much. I had to actually see it written down for it to click. To make matters funnier, as I was researching the internet to bring you this link to more information about the "Vieux Carr�", the web site I found gives it a pronunciation of [view-ka-ray]- which would have probably been as equally perplexing to me had our driver used that pronunciation instead.
New Orleans actually has quite a rich and interesting French and Spanish history. You all may know this already, but it was quite fascinating to me. I also got a brief lesson on the Louisiana Purchase as we passed by the place where it was signed, and I'll have to go read up on that a bit more, now that my interest has been piqued.
The tour dropped us off back at Jackson Square. From there I strolled up through the farmer's market and flea market. The farmer's market was great fun - air filled with the savoury smell of hot sauces and creole spices. At the end of the market I crossed over to the river walk and strolled along the Mississippi river for a few blocks.
That took me back to St. Louis Street, where the New Orleans School of Cooking and General Store is located. They have real lessons in Creole cooking there during the day, and as it happened there was one in session when I got there. I didn't sit in, since it had already started, but I explored the shop and picked up a souviner for Tim in the process :-)
Another famous landmark on St. Louis Street is Johnny's Po'Boy restaurant. The Po' Boy, or "Poor Boy" is a sandwich made with French bread. According to our tour driver, it started back during a local transit worker's strike. A local restaurant in the French Market took pity on the "poor boys" who were out of work, and concocted sandwiches made from french bread and leftovers that they would sell for pennies to strikers who came by. Also according to our tour guide and my taxi cab driver from the night before (who was as you can tell a fountain of information in his own right), you can put just about anything between two halves of french bread and make it a "po' boy". today they are often filled with seafood - in particular fried oysters. But you can still order them with just about anything in them - especially at Johnny's.
Unfortunately the place was totally packed, and I was hot, and hungry and not inclined to wait. So I'll have to try and make my way back over there on Monday or Tuesday.
I headed back over to Royal Street and by now the shops were all open and the street was lively and filled with people - mostly tourists from the number of people snapping pictures that I observed. According to my taxi driver from last night there is a Nursing conference here in town too (yeah - it's actually a classic combination: Techno Geeks and Nurses. It reminds me of my days at McGill where the engineers would have their friday night engineering beer bashes, and invite the nursing students to attend to increase the ratio of women to men. Not that it really helped them in any way in the end ;-) but I digress). Musicians were playing in all of the indoor/outdoor restaurants and cafes and on the streets. And the thing that struck me as interesting was that as I was walking I didn't hear a single bad musician or singer. I mean - I've been in a lot of cities and heard a lot of street musicians, subway musicians, and "entertainers". You've got your decent ones. And you've gone your really bad ones. But the ones I heard as I walked the streets of New Orleans today were all really good. It is definitely a musical city - true to its fame. Should be totally cool to see and hear it at night.
The above photo also gives you a bit of a glimpse of the wrought iron balconies that are prevalent throughout the french quarter. Although it is called the French Quarter, the wrought iron balconies and the hidden central courtyards are Spanish architectural influences, as Spain was the ruling entity at the time (1762-1800) and as such, were the ones who oversaw the reconstruction of large portions of the city after the big fire in 1788 that burned over 850 structures . The buildings in the quarter are authentic - dating back to the reconstruction of the 1700s.
If you look closely at the balconies, you would also more often than not see them adorned with Mardi Gras beads glinting in the sun. The stores are full of them too. It makes for quite festive looking streets, even when Mardi Gras is over :-)
After a leisurely stroll back down Royal Street to Canal, I returned to the hotel, had lunch in the restaurant there, and then made some dinner reservations for our little team for this evening. The concierge picked a place called the Pelican Club. It's a brief walk from our hotel and should be fun!
Then it is off to meetings tomorrow :-)
(Incidentally, and I'm not normally one to plug this kinda stuff, I found all of the above links and the ones in my previous post using the New MSN Search. I have to say - I've been very impressed with its results since the launch of their new and improved service!)