Remember how I went to New Orleans for three months in 2009?
I told you the horror story of my creepy Craigslist landlord, but I never told
you anything good about my stay in New Orleans. The good far and above
outweighed the bad; it’s just that my creepy landlord story is always the
starting point. But now, it’s time to talk about the good.
Around the middle of November, I was sort of figuring out
life in New Orleans. My internship was running along smoothly, and my two
part-time retail jobs (mostly) kept food on the (non-existent) table. Ok, so I
was poor and incredibly busy, but I was in New Orleans, which totally made up
for it.
At the same time, I was a little lonesome. I was more than a
thousand miles away from my family and friends. I had made some new friends in
New Orleans, yes, but I still missed everyone back home. I’d had a less than
wonderful Halloween that year (I sat in my shed/house and watched the Halloween
episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer),
and if you remember, Halloween is my favorite holiday. The disappointing
Halloween made me lonelier than ever, and I was beginning to pine for the
Midwest.
So when my mom called and asked how I’d feel about her
visiting me for a few days near the end of November, I said, “YES, PLEASE!”
before she’d even finished the offer. Mom would arrive on a Saturday and leave
on Thanksgiving Day (as a retail employee, there was no way I could get out of
working on Black Friday). The plan was set, and I eagerly began counting down
the days until Mom arrived in the Big Easy.
As I mentioned before, my living quarters in New Orleans
were a spiffed-up shed in someone’s backyard. I slept on an air mattress, my
closet was one of those stand-up rack things, and my kitchen consisted of a
microwave and a mini-fridge. Clearly, this was an unfit place to host one’s
mother for a six-day vacation. So Mom sent me scouting for the perfect hotel.
We wanted one in a decent neighborhood within walking distance of the streetcar
line, but we didn’t want the exorbitant prices of the French Quarter.
Mom did some internet research, and she sent me to check out
a place called the Prytania Park Hotel. Since I lived nearby, we thought it
would be a good idea for me to check out the neighborhood and the Prytania to
ensure that we weren’t staying at a roach motel in the New Orleans ghetto.
Thankfully, it was just the opposite. The Prytania is a quaint little hotel
right off of St Charles Avenue, which is famous for its ornate mansions. There
was a streetcar line just two blocks away, which meant that we could just ride
that everywhere and not have to worry about the treacherous parking in the
French Quarter. The Prytania even had a little courtyard, and I was sold.
The day of Mom’s arrival finally approached, and we checked
into our charming hotel. But what to do first? “Eating something delicious” was
on the top of Mom’s to-do list. New Orleans is famous for its seafood, and my
mom LOVES seafood. From our hotel, we could see a place called the Voodoo BBQ,
which looked quite promising. We walked right over and ordered barbecue shrimp
(which is not shrimp in barbecue sauce, but shrimp in a delicious buttery,
garlicky, white wine sauce) and corn pudding, and it was heaven on a plate.
Mom’s trip was off to a strong start.
Fall is festival season for New Orleans: summer is too hot,
so when fall rolls around, they really celebrate. There’s some kind of festival
nearly every weekend, and they’re usually food-themed. Mom and I hadn’t really
thought about the festivals, but my landlady had told us about a festival
happening that Sunday called the Po’boy Preservation Festival. A po’boy is a
New Orleans submarine-type sandwich that is made on French bread and usually
contains some kind of seafood. We decided to hop on the streetcar and go to the
festival.
And what a great decision that was. As soon as we stepped
off the streetcar, the aroma of food wafted into our nostrils. The street was
filled with food booths, and there were so many tempting choices. Mom knew
immediately what she wanted: char grilled oysters. We had come upon a giant
open grill covered with halved oysters, and Mom wanted those oysters.
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| LOOK AT THEM. |
I, on the
other hand, was skeptical. The closest I had ever come to an oyster was the
time Mom had me open up a can of smoked oysters, and they smelled like canned
death. Mom assured me these oysters were different, so I hesitantly agreed to
share an order with her. My mom was totally, completely, 100% right.
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| This is the face of pure joy. |
These
oysters had been grilled to perfection and basted with butter, garlic, and
lemon. I had died and gone to seafood heaven. We tried a few other things at
the Po’boy Festival: stuffed shrimp, a shrimp po’boy… but nothing managed to
even come close to those oysters.
Our second stop was the museum where I was interning. They
had a display there of original Disney animation studio drawings from a number
of movies, including Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. Mom is a
tried-and-true Disney fan, so we went to see the exhibit. It was doubly fun for
me, since I got to show Mom around “my” museum.
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| She even let me take her picture by the sign. |
It’s not too often that unpaid
interns can feel important, but when you get to walk around and say, “See the
label for this piece? I wrote that paragraph!” you do feel a little special…
especially when you have someone who will at least pretend to be impressed!
For supper that evening, we ate at Landry’s, which is a
floating seafood restaurant. It’s situated on gigantic Lake Pontchartrain, and
you get there via a little floating walkway. Mom had not had her fill of
oysters for the day, so that’s what we got. They were not quite as good as the
char-grilled oysters, but it’s almost unfair to compare them. In any case, we
got to eat at a floating restaurant, which was a first for both of us.
Later that evening, I took Mom to the pinnacle of the New
Orleans experience: Bourbon Street.
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| Mom loves Bourbon Street! |
We rode the streetcar right into the heart
of the French Quarter, and we just strolled along,
taking in all the sights, sounds, and (less pleasant) smells. Mom got to see
the kitschy little shops with all their ridiculous wares. I tried to convince
Mom to bring home a dried alligator head for my brother, but she was a tough
sell.
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| Though my brother never got his gator head, Mom did make friends with this guy. |
Our final stop of Mom’s first full day in New Orleans was
Café du Monde: home of the beignet. A beignet is a fried French donut covered
in powdered sugar, and they are divine. Mom, who has never been a big dessert
eater, thought they were just ok.
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| She put on a happy face anyway. |
For her, nothing compared to the Po’boy
Preservation Festival oysters.
The next day, we headed back to the French Quarter. It was a
lot different in the daylight, and Mom wanted to see some of the little antique
stores and the architecture. We went to Jackson Square and wandered through St
Louis Cathedral, and we walked down by the Mississippi River. Mom and I went to
the French Market, and we just took in the charm. We went on a cemetery tour
and saw the tomb of Marie LaVeau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.
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| Not creepy at all. |
Fun cemetery
fact: Marie LaVeau’s grave is the second most visited grave in the United
States, right behind Elvis and right before JFK. Legend has it if you draw
three Xs on her grave and leave her an offering, Marie LaVeau will grant you a
wish. Mom and I didn’t try it, mostly because our tour guide told us that you
can get arrested for defacing the tombstone. Sounds like a good enough reason
to leave it alone.
Mom and I each had a three-day streetcar pass, and that
included as many rides as our little hearts desired. When we were done with the
French Quarter that day, we hopped on the St Charles streetcar that would take
us back to the hotel. We decided, though, that we could just as well ride the
streetcar and see where it went. We rode through the Garden District, which was
even beautiful at night. After a while, though, the neighborhoods got less and
less pleasant. Suddenly, the streetcar stopped and it was announced that we
were at the end of the line. Mom and I really hoped that we weren’t about to
get thrown off: it looked pretty scary out there. Luckily, the conductor just
flipped the seat backs so they were facing the opposite direction, and we took
off back the way we came. Mom later told one of her coworkers that we had
ridden the streetcar all the way to where it ended. Her coworker, who had spent
quite a bit of time in New Orleans, told her that he can’t believe we did that
– it gets dangerous towards the end of the line!
We spent Mom’s third full New Orleans day riding the ferry
across the Mississippi River to a little island known as Algiers.
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| It was breezy. Can you tell? |
The island is
right across the river from the French Quarter, but it seems like it is worlds
apart. The streets were quiet, and there were hardly any tourists around. Mom
and I went on the Jazz Walk, which sounded a lot more interesting than it
actually was. The Jazz Walk started with a statue of Louis Armstrong and
consisted of lampposts containing facts about obscure jazz musicians.
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| Yes, I have heard of Jelly Roll Morton. But how are we near-sighted folks supposed to read the lamppost facts?! |
We
followed the Jazz Walk until we reached a giant green, yellow, and purple
building announcing itself to be Mardi Gras World. Just like the rest of the
island, there seemed to be no one around. Mom and I crept around the building,
and we stumbled across something rather unsettling: piles and piles of
disintegrating Mardi Gras float pieces.
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| I'm pretty sure this is where nightmares go to die. |
We left Algiers shortly afterwards,
which was probably just as well.
For lunch that day, Mom wanted a muffuletta sandwich. A
muffuletta is a round sandwich made with a bunch of different deli meats and a
vinegary olive salad. According to Mom’s New Orleans savvy coworker, the
Central Grocery originated the sandwich and was therefore the best place to get
one. The Central Grocery is a little grocery store where you can buy everything
from fancy European cheese to pickled octopus. You line up at the counter to
get your sandwich, and then there’s another little counter where you can sit
down and it eat. Those sandwiches were delicious (even though I picked the
olive salad off mine).
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| See how much I love my pseudo muffuletta? |
Mom and I were progressing quickly through her “New
Orleans Food Bucket List.”
After lunch, we spent more time walking around the French
Quarter. This time, we were looking for some of the supposedly haunted houses:
the LaLaurie Mansion and the Sultan’s Palace. The LaLaurie mansion is
supposedly haunted by the slaves that were tortured by Madam LaLaurie in the 1830s, and the mansion was actually owned by Nicholas
Cage at one point. The legend of the Sultan’s Palace is allegedly haunted by
the spirit of a sultan and his harem who were murdered by the sultan’s brother.
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| I was half expecting a see-through Turkish sultan go strolling along the balcony. |
What a sultan was doing in New Orleans, I have no idea. We could not go inside
the mansions, but that was fine: we got the creeps just from standing on the
sidewalk across from them.
After we spent time looking at the mansions on St Charles Avenue (some of the most expensive real estate in the country), Mom decided that she wanted the Voodoo BBQ for supper: really,
their barbecue shrimp was to die for. After supper, though, we had run out of
plans. Since we had spent our entire day on our feet, Mom and I decided we
wanted to do something that involved sitting for that evening. We ventured out
to the New Orleans suburbs to the five-dollar AMC theatre. There was a time
when every movie at AMC during the week was $5, no matter if it was a 4 o’clock
show or a 9 o’clock show. Ahh, the good old days.
Wednesday was to be Mom’s final full day in New Orleans, so
we had to do something great. Up until that point, I had been the one
suggesting activities. Before Mom arrived, I had seen plenty of things I wanted
to do (like the cemetery tour), but no one with which do to them. We had been
doing all sorts of things from MY list, and Mom seemed to be enjoying herself. When
I asked her what SHE really wanted to do, she usually turned the reigns over to
me and informed me that she’d let me know if one of my ideas sounded really
lousy. On her last full day, though, Mom decided that she really wanted to see
Oak Alley Plantation.
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| Who doesn't love a good plantation? |
When we got back to New Orleans, it was suppertime. Mom and
I decided to sample a restaurant called Copeland’s, which was actually famous
for their desserts. We ended up splitting appetizers for supper and bread
pudding (a good Southern dish!) for dessert. I loved the bread pudding: it was
warm and fluffy with a white chocolate/raspberry bourbon sauce. Mom, who would
generally prefer another serving of vegetables over dessert, was not as
thrilled as I was. To end the night, we went to another $5 movie (new movies
were never that cheap, even in South Dakota). We’d had a great day.
The next day was Thanksgiving Day: the day of Mom’s
departure. She didn’t leave until the early afternoon, so we had a bit of time
to accomplish a little bit more sight-seeing. We walked down Magazine Street,
which is famous for its little shops and cafes. We found an abandoned church
that had a “for sale” sign in the window. We stumbled across a little Norwegian
church, which was kind of surprising to see in Louisiana. For our Thanksgiving
dinner, we had breakfast sandwiches at a streetcar-turned-restaurant. You may
think it’s odd to have breakfast sandwiches for Thanksgiving, but Mom and I
were perfectly happy. Neither of us likes turkey, anyway.
All too soon, it was time to take Mom to the airport. I had
to work that evening at the craft store, so it was about time for me to get my
uniform on and go sell glittery flowers and scrapbooking scissors. Mom found
her plane with no problems and made it home with no problems, which is always a
good way to end a trip.
I had such a fantastic time in New Orleans with my mom, and
if you asked her, I believe she’d say the same thing. Permit me a moment of
sentimentality here, but it really is great to have a mom who is also your
friend.
Stay tuned for adventures in New Orleans: the Dad edition!
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