do you know what it means to miss new orleans

By the time I got to my last week in New Orleans, I was finished with arbitration work, so I got to do most of things I had left on my New Orleans list. (Yes, I had a list. I'm a person who makes lists, ok?) A few highlights:

Brie and I went out for one last drink at Pat O'Brien's. I don't think I even had a quarter of my "Skylab," so I couldn't blame POB when I completely bit it on the sidewalk walking home. One second I was walking along fine, the next I was on the ground. It was like I teleported there. Painfully. Brie was like, "Are you okay? No one saw."


The next morning I took Brie to the airport. We drove through the Ninth Ward on the way there. Many houses were still destroyed. Others were obviously new, and groups of people worked on several.

Another day I went to dinner on Frenchman Street with a guy named Michael. We went to Adolfo's and I had some amazing salmon with "ocean sauce" on it. Michael brought a bottle of wine that turned out to be champagne. When the waiter uncorked it, the pop was so loud everyone in the room jumped. The waiter said, "Sorry, folks. Bad neighborhood." Later we went zydeco dancing at Rock 'n' Bowl, which is a bowling alley with a dance floor. I was no good at the zydeco eight-step but I did manage the cajun waltz.

In this picture you can kind of see the zydeco band, which includes a guy playing a washboard tied to his chest:


I went to a few museums, including the pharmacy museum on Chartres St. I've already mentioned their voodoo stuff, but they had some other remedies as well:




One day I walked down to Central Grocery on Decatur St. to get a muffuletta (pronounced muff-uh-lotta.) There was a bit of a line outside:


And inside:


I ordered half a sandwich and sat at a back counter to eat it. I ate half of the half. It was gigantic. And very olive-y. Afterwards I went to a museum, where they had an exhibit that very defensive about the whole "Let's just not rebuild New Orleans" idea, stopped at a little shop to buy pralines, and saw this guy, who was a street performer, like the frozen silver robot guy you see sometimes, only he was a frozen construction worker forever crawling out of a manhole:


Another day I went across the river to Algiers with Paul, who said Algiers was named that because the heat and mosquitoes reminded soldiers stationed there of Algiers, Africa. Besides the closed hoodoo shop, we walked along a levee (at right; this is not what I thought levees looked like... I thought they were like big mechanical dams) and drove by the warehouses where they make the Mardi Gras floats:



We also went to an art store in Metarie so I could buy postcard stuff. and stopped for one last snoball (blueberry/strawberry.)

On my last full day in New Orleans, I was feeling sad about leaving, so I decided to walk around the quarter and take random pictures.

I said good-bye to the good ol' postal emporium, where I almost had to strangle people to get them to let me receive mail:


And to CC's Community Coffee House, where Brie and I drank "Mochasippis" and worked on our laptops:


And to Bourbon St, which I wasn't too fond of:





And to the rest of the Quarter, which I loved:










The next day I packed up the apartment, did some cleaning, and headed out. I decided to stop by Anne Rice's old house in the Garden District before I left. It was huge. It used to be an orphanage, and now I think it's condos:


I needed comfort food to make it through the big break-up, so I stopped by Creole Creamery for some ice cream (creole cream cheese and strawberry, if you were wondering) and headed east.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know I'm not wrong, this feeling's gettin' stronger
The longer I stay away
Miss them moss covered vines
The tall sugar pines
Where mockin' birds used to sing
And I'd like to see that lazy Mississippi
Hurryin' into Spring

The moonlight on the bayou
A creole tune
That fills the air
I dream
About magnolias in bloom
And I'm wishin' I was there

~"Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans"
Lyrics by Eddie DeLange and Louis Alter