We got kind of late start from Memphis, getting on the road around 2:30pm. The drive went well, only hitting traffic going through Jackson. We arrived at about 8:30pm at the bed and breakfast that we got hooked up with through Angela Wilson, chef with Andrew at L’Ecole and displaced New Orleanains.
We got checked in and couldn’t believe our luck with our accommodations. The place was fabulous, an adorable camelback at the edge of the Marigny, a few blocks to the French Quarter in one direction and a few blocks to Frenchmen Street the other direction. The first floor had a living room with 20 ft ceilings, an eat-in kitchen, a half bathroom and laundry closet tucked under the stairs, and a cute little patio outback shaded by a wisteria arbor. Upstairs was the bedroom and a full bathroom. Antique furniture, framed prints of Paris and by Parisian artists, and original photography by one of the b&b’s owners decorated the space. Thoughtful amenities included cable TV, a great library of many local and regional authors, ceiling fans, umbrellas, iron and ironing board, hairdryer, bath towels and pillowcases embroidered with “The Little Yellow House Bed and Breakfast.” In short, we had everything we needed to have a pleasant, comfortable time.
After settling in, we hit the town to head over to Frenchmen Street. We strolled along listening to music coming from out of the clubs. We decided to head into the Quarter but were stopped at the corner of Decatur and Esplanade by a loopy lady trying to act clairvoyant. It was an interesting encounter to kick off the trip.
Once in the Quarter, we headed to Remoulade on Bourbon Street, which is a subsidiary of the pricier, fancier Arnaud’s. We like this place for its delivery of New Orleans staples from a kitchen open later than most places serving that kind of fare. We strolled down Bourbon Street back toward the Marigny, undecided about whether to stay and hang out in the area or to try to find our way to Vaughn’s Lounge to see Kermit Ruffins.
Eventually we decided to take a taxi there and see what was going down. We were delighted that we did. The music was outstanding in a bar that was clearly dominated by locals. We had a great time taking part in a Thursday night tradition that’s been going strong for 14 years. Afterwards, we collapsed into our comfy bed to rest up for the next day.
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| Vaughn's Lounge Friday, June 4 We woke up early and headed to Croissant D’Or in the Quarter for breakfast, a perfect way to start the day with croissants and café au lait. We decided to make our way along Royal Street to the Canal Street trolley to take us to the art museum. We stopped to enjoy a group of musicians, a lady singer, and a couple dancing swing moves.    |
On our way, we stopped at the Hotel Monteleone which contains the Carousel Bar where we had cocktails at the slowly rotating merry-go-round. It was a much tamer version of the bar in Circus Circus from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but I still enjoyed my Thompsonesque moment.
While we found our way onto the trolley just fine, when it came to getting off the trolley, I relied too heavily on my memory of how things went a couple of years ago when I took the same route with Dr. Yamamoto and company. A period of confusion and consternation frustrated Andrew and me before we got things figured out and back on an even keel. As it was, we wound up walking from the Canal Street trolley line to City Park, which in the end worked out okay.
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| Live Oak in City Park |
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| Odd Fellows Rest One of the many cemetaries at the end of Canal St. |
Afterwards, we got a taxi back to the Quarter and went to Stanley’s for dinner. The people-watching was great from the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows facing out on Jackson Square. Here, I had the best Reuben ever. I don’t even want to eat another from anywhere else, now that I have experienced Reuben perfection.
After dinner, we went to Rouses to make groceries and then headed back to the house. Andrew did a little cooking, and we chilled at the house until calling a cab to take us to the Howlin’ Wolf. Rebirth Brass Band was playing for their 27th birthday celebration, and the opening act was Joe Krown, Wolfman Washington, and Russell Batiste Jr.
We wound up getting to the venue way early, and so we walked around and found Cochon and its simplified offshoot, Butcher. We had already eaten dinner not so long ago, but we couldn’t resist the temptations of the pork products curing in a dry case at Butcher. We got some andouille and cheese and crackers and beer. The kitchen sent out some summer sausage, and there was green tomato ketchup that would have made Grandma proud.
After noshing and some more strolling, it was time to get down with some great music in an awesome venue. It was my first visit to the Howlin’ Wolf, and I really loved the carved wood bar and the Creole cottages adorning each side of the stage. Aside from visual aesthetics, the music was rocking. Andrew and I (and, doubtless, dozens others) recognized Joe Krown from the HBO series Treme (my favorite!). That band was so hot! They also had a guitarist with them, but I didn’t catch his name.
Then Rebirth came out and gave a solid throw down performance. We left the venue as they were finishing the last song, and I discovered that I had lost my voice, presumably due to a combination of a screaming between songs and aggravated allergies. It was about 2:30am when we got back to the house, exhausted and happy.
When we woke up, we got ready to go to Commander’s Palace for Andrew’s birthday lunch. We drove my car, which turned out to be the beginning of a debacle. On the drive, I discovered that my power windows quit working while the back two were open about 4 inches. This is problematic but not tragic. We had to tell the valet guys to keep an eye on it while we ate, but it wasn’t a big deal.
We had a great time at the restaurant. We were seated in a dining room that was apparently full of people celebrating special occasions. All the tables had balloon, and there was a jazz trio playing to each of the tables. Our table was distinctive in that it had a wide green ribbon laid diagonally across beneath the place settings. The staff was extra gracious as (I guess) they had been told Andrew is a chef.
We ordered cocktails and placed our orders and sat back to enjoy. We received an amuse bouche while enjoying our appetizer. The food was amazing, and the atmosphere thoroughly pleasant. The jazz trio came by and sang “Happy Birthday” to Andrew. Near the end of the meal, the chef came out and sat down at our table and talked shop with Andrew, who made a business contact to hook up L’Ecole externs at Commander’s. He was really personable and offered to give us a tour of the kitchen after we finished eating. The kitchen sent out two extra desserts with the two we ordered, and, of course, we could barely touch any of them after the previous courses. It was so much fun to be so pampered and to be extra indulgent.
Then we picked up my car from the valet and now, in addition to the windows being inoperative, the air conditioning, locks, lights, clock, and pretty much every electrical thing inside the car had stopped working too. This presented a pretty profound problem, as the car was now a solar cooker and couldn’t be driven back to Memphis in that condition. It was Saturday, though, and there weren’t any car places open to try to fix it. Also, we couldn’t park it just anywhere now that the rear windows were partially open.
Andrew decided that we could park the car at the parking garage at the Hilton, where we were moving to the next day. At least, it would be less of a target than parked on the streets. I drove to the garage, and Andrew then sent out some text messages to our friends back in Memphis soliciting them to look up a fuse diagram for our car and email it to us.
With that squared away as well as possible, we got a cab and rode back to the house to change and decompress. I was really upset because I had rather insisted that we take my car on the trip instead of Andrew’s, and now that had turned disastrous. After some inappropriately expressed frustration on my part, Andrew and I found our way back to a more pleasant mode of interaction.
Eventually, we ventured out again to head to Patios for dinner (the setting for the restaurant from Treme). It was quite a long ride down Tchopitoulas to the restaurant, but it was cool to see another part of the city. Our table was featured in the TV show where the restaurant critics were seated when they visited the fictional DeSeautel.
After dinner, we headed back to the house to prepare to change lodgings to the Hilton in the morning. We strolled down to Frenchmen’s for the last time and saw some really great string band buskers.
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| Interior of Cafe Rose Nicaud |
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| Artist on Frenchmen St. |
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| Nifty Marigny intersection |
Sunday, June 6
We woke up early and finished packing and tidying up. We loved staying at the Little Yellow House Bed and Breakfast and can’t wait to return again. We called a got a cab to get us moved over to the Hilton, where we had a lovely room with a great view of the Riverwalk and area around Harrah’s.
After getting settled into our accommodations, Andrew headed to the parking garage to attempt to repair my car with some diagrams on his Blackberry and a book light. With no success, we decided to head into the Quarter for the First Annual Gulf Oyster Festival. This event had lots of the local restaurants vending food, so we noshed around. They also had my favorite drive-thru daiquiri shop set up there, so I had to get a breakfast daiquiri (not from a drive-thru but still nice).
We got a call from a guy we met up with last night, Will the Awesome. We were glad to run into him again and hung out with him for a little while before he had to go to work. He recited some original poetry for us, and we were really impressed. Andrew stopped in at Peach Records, a former southern chain of music stores that Andrew had spent a lot of time in when one was open in Memphis. It was a good chance to get some souvenirs from there and Hard Rock Café next door.
An afternoon shower sent us back to the room for a little while. After the weather cleared up, we went ambling through the Quarter, taking lots of pictures as we went.
We made a stop in at the much-loved MRB and enjoyed the courtyard immensely. We went down to the French Market to finish up our souvenir shopping then headed back to the hotel to drop off our packages
and to get ready for that’s night show: the Hot 8 Brass Band at the Howlin’ Wolf lounge.
When we pulled up in the cab and saw the lights were all off at the Howlin’ Wolf, we were totally bummed. The venue, it turned out, was a small bar on the block’s other corner and, in the back, a 30’ x 30’ cinderblock room with a few chairs along the walls was the performance space. The 10 piece band produced a sound in that space that is indescribable. It was an amazing, intimate experience that’s difficult to compare to any other. The bar also had Magic Hat No. 9 on tap, and I was drinking it like water while I was dancing. We had a great time and left even more in awe of the quality of the local musicians. We caught a cab back to the Quarter after the show and stumbled into the scene.
We walked around the Bourbon Street scene afterward for a bit but soon decided to return to the hotel to prepare to check out in the morning and start trying to find a way to fix my car so we could return home.
Monday, June 7
We got up at 8am and started calling all sorts of car places. Someone had suggested that we attempt to get some help through AutoZone, but they said that they wouldn’t be able to help once we explained the issue. They suggested a place that only did automotive electric work, which we called and were told there was no way that they could get us in that day. I thought it might be a good idea to try some of the Ford dealerships, both in the city and in some of the outer-lying towns. All of the parts desks I spoke to acted like I was requesting parts for a Pinto when I was asking about my 1998 Crown Victoria.
We were running out of ideas and out of time before we were supposed to check out of the hotel and get on the road back to Memphis. We decided to schedule with the shop doing automotive electrical work for the next day. Then we tried to book another night at the Hilton, but, since they were hosting 2 conferences that week, they didn’t have any vacancies. I called up my old standby, the Hotel St. Marie, and was able to get a balcony room for a great rate. So, we loaded up into another taxi and headed to our new hotel on Bourbon and Toulouse.
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| Views from Hotel St. Marie balcony |
Andrew was really impressed with the hotel, which is really nothing fancy but has everything you need and is in a really excellent location. The balcony was great too. We decided to make the best of our day “stuck” in New Orleans and went down to Café du Monde to chart our day. We remembered that our friend, Brandy, who had been in Port St. Joe, Florida with Madison, was now back in town. We gave her a call and were able to go over to her house in Metairie and hang out for a while. We stopped in Mandina’s for lunch since we were out that way – always a treat. It was great to see Brandy and family as always, and she was full of stories about Madison’s behavior while she was on vacation in Florida.
After Brandy’s, we decided to try a pretty-well reviewed bar and grill called Coop’s Place. Maybe this place had its heyday in the past or maybe we were there on a bad night, but that was the least exciting food we had on our trip. Afterwards, we picked up some stupidly large frozen daiquiris and walked around and people-watched until time to head back to the hotel. When we got back, it was quite pleasant to relax on the balcony and absorb the mayhem from a distance.
Tuesday, June 8
Rise and shine and pack the car. We headed to the automotive repair shop and found it with little difficulty. The mechanic already had an air of superiority before he asked Andrew for something flat to open my hood, and Andrew helpfully responded that he might have a butter knife. The mechanic kind of scoffed and said something about a screwdriver being more what he had in mind. Ever the diplomat, I pointed out that those were tools from each of their respective trades and made sense and tried to imply that Andrew was not stupid for making such a suggestion.
After about 30 minutes, he informed us that we had a missing fuse for the lighter/outlet, which we knew because it frequently shorted out so we had removed it since we didn’t use the cigarette lighter anyway. Since then, I had filled that area with change and now, somehow, a coin had made contact with all the electric contact points in the lighter, resulting in a massive shorting out of most of the interior electrical components. So, he took the coins out, permanently disconnected the lighter electrical connections, put in a new fuse, and sent us on our way to the tune of $30. All’s well that ends well, and it was really hard to complain about having an extra day in New Orleans.
After the car was done, I realized that we were near Angelo Brocato’s Gelateria and suggested that we get a treat before hitting the road. We did and were so glad that we had. Its fame was well earned and, even at about 10am, they had a steady line of customers. From there, we hit the interstate and had an easy drive back home to Memphis.
All in all, I think Andrew had a happy birthday extravaganza.
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