Day #9 - 3/21/2011 New Orleans (a day of rest)

Oh man, did it feel good to not get up at 4:45a.m. and slip into biking shorts.  I was still up pretty early, but let Lani sleep until a comfortable 8:00a.m.  Finally prying her out of bed, we walked over the Decatur Street, home of Cafe du Monde and the French Marketplace.  On the way, Lani was sucked into the vinyl vortex of Peaches Records where she caressed a copy of Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, a favorite album of ours.

Peaches Records, a vinyl heaven for those vinyly inclined.

I finally dragged her away and we continued along Jackson Square.  Originally named by the French as  the Place d' Armes,  it was renamed Jackson Square after the victorious United States general Andrew Jackson following the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. 

Jackson Square, a National Historic Monument in the French Quarter of New Orleans, is now a center out outdoor culture, shopping and tourism.  We blended in..

Cafe du Monde, famous for its café au lait and its French-style beignets was already inundated with tourists and locals, so we continued to the French Marketplace with the plan of trying/sharing some of the wares from each vendor.

Surveying the scene in the French Marketplace

The plan: eat something from as many vendors as possible.

We shared a brie pancake.  I don't know why...I love brie and trusted the cook here to know what they were doing.  Conclusion: brie does not belong in a pancake.

Disappointed with our brie-laden pancake, we moved on, hoping for more.  Much more.

Meals from the Heart Cafe, on the other hand, was a winner.  We had their crab cake, worth going back for.

Next was a colorful shop that had bottles and packages of cooking condiments and related paraphernalia for the gullible tourist.  Seriously...do locals come here?  Anyway, we did.

Oh, yeah...this was a winner.  See the bread on the plate on the left?  Lani dipped some in the Voodoo Hot Sauce and presented it to me as a treat, not telling me what it was.  What it was was something that set my mouth ablaze.  The owner of the shop told me it was the hottest sauce he knows of.  Good times.

Mouth still afire from the Voodoo Hot Sauce, I knew I needed something starchy to get the capsaicins out of my mouth.

The Organic Banana makes smoothies

Personally, I think the whole "smoothie" concept is overrated.  Better to eat the whole fruit.  Anyway, it wasn't my call.

Smoothylicious

King Creole offered a Creole breakfast, so we sat down.

Turtle Creole from King Creole.  I have now tried turtle and did not feel particularly enriched.

I've done this sort of food grazing at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia with much, much greater success.  We moved on and headed outside.

Tourists were milling around by late morning.

Shops along Decatur Street in the French Quarter

The area around Jackson Square  had really come alive.

Artists plying their wares along Jackson Square.

 For those interested, you can get a ride in a horse-drawn carriage.

I wonder if there's a pooper-scooper regulation for horses?

 We returned to Peaches Records:

When I was in college, I had a limited musical repetoire, mostly Chicago, The Moody Blues and 10CC.  One of my fraternity brothers used to try to get me to play "some good music", handing me this album.  I never took him up on it.  A few years later, I picked up a copy of SITKOL and was blown away from the first chords.

Lani and I finished the day separately.  She got together with a high school friend and former UF colleage, Anna Lai, who now lives in NoLa working at a consulting firm that does traffic engineering for the city.  Lani last saw Anna when the super-serendipitously cross paths in Yosemite:

Anna and Lani below Yosemite Falls

This was pretty amazing.  We had just spent the night in Yosemite and were on our way to San Francisco by car but took one last turn through the valley floor.  It had rained the previous night and the waterfalls were again thundering.  We stopped below Yosemite Falls to sight see just a bit more.  As we sat there, Anna, now living in New Orleans and not having spoken with Lani in years, walked by and recognized us.

Anyway, the current encounter was very much planned and they went out for dinner in New Orleans that night.  Lani and Anna had been good friends growing up...it was nice to see them together.

Anna and Lani after a night out.

I went for a stroll and blogged while enjoying dinner.  It was nice being a tourist in New Orleans.